
Class IB S^fj^T 
Book • 7>J5 # 

GopyrightN? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
• Edited by JOHN H. KERR, D. D. 



THE TEACHING OF JESUS 
CONCERNING 

THE SCRIPTURES 



David James Burrell, D. D., LL. D. 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

CONCERNING 

HIS OWN MISSION. Frank H. Foster. Ready. 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE CHURCH. 
Geerhardus Vos. Ready. 
GOD THE FATHER 

Archibald Thomas Robertson. " 

THE SCRIPTURES. David James Burrell. 

HIS OWN PERSON In preparation. 

CHRISTIAN CONDUCT 

THE HOLY SPIRIT 

THE FUTURE LIFE " 

THE FAMILY 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

A Series of volumes on the " Teachings of Jesus " 
by eminent writers and divines. 

Cloth bound. i2mo. Price 75 cts. each postpaid. 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 



THE TEACHING OF JESUS 



CONCERNING 



THE SCRIPTURES 



By 

David James Burrell> D.D., LL.D. 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 NASSAU STREET 
NEW YORK 



■ T^&s 



J 30WSSF3S 

27 1904 

{CLASS fc£ XXo.No, 



COPYRIGHT, I904 
BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 



PREFACE 



yt MAN named Jesus claims to be 
yt the incarnate Son of God. 
Whence has he come ? From 
" the glory which he had with the 
Father before the world was." What 
is he doing here ? He says that he has 
come into the world to teach the truth ; 
" To this end was I born and for this 
cause came I into the world, that I should 
bear witness unto the truth' ' (Johnxviii. 
37). 

He finds a book in the hands of the 
people which is generally regarded as 
true and trustworthy every way. They 
hold it to be an " infallible rule of faith 



vi Preface 

and practice," that is to say, it is their 
ultimate authority in doctrine and ethics. 
This book is constantly before him. 
What will he do with it ? What will he 
have to say about it ? 

This question is one of supreme im- 
portance to those who profess to follow 
him. As to others, they are at liberty to 
believe what they like ; but those who 
call themselves disciples of Jesus have no 
alternative but to renounce him or to 
accept what he says. His Court is the 
Court of Last Resort, for them. It is 
just as well to remember this, in these 
controversial times. There are teachers 
and teachers, but there is only one teacher 
for Christians. When Hillel and Sham- 
mai have spoken their last word, we 
await his "Verily, verily, I say unto 
you." Any man is at liberty to quit 
Christ ; but no man can cleave to Christ 
and withhold aught of loyalty from him. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. Antecedent Presumption as to 
the Attitude of Jesus toward 

the Scriptures I 

II. The Actual Attitude of Jesus 

TOWARD THE SCRIPTURES . . 1 8 

III. The Specific Teaching of Jesus 

Concerning the Scriptures . 87 

IV. The Provision of Jesus for the 

Writing of the New Testa- 
ment 162 

V. The Silence of Jesus as to Al- 
leged Errors of the Scriptures. 163 
VI. Summary and Conclusion . . 180 
Appendices 195 

A. The Incarnation . . 195 

B. Other Incarnations . 196 

C. Errors in Scripture . 198 

D. Kenosis 199 

Indices 203, 209 

vii 



CHAPTER I 

Antecedent Presumptioji as to the 
Attitude of Jesus toward the 
Scriptures. 

/F there were no Bible we should all 
be wondering why ; nor would our 
wonder cease until we had made a 
Bible, however full of faults, to satisfy it. 
This is why there are so many " sacred 
books" in the world. They represent 
not only a universal longing but a uni- 
versal sense of the fitness of things. Men 
want a Bible and must have it. " There 
is a spirit in man " and " the spirit of man 
is the candle of the Lord." We were 



2 The Scriptures 

made in God's likeness and, fallen though 
we are, the glory is not all departed. 
There are memories, hopes, desires, as- 
pirations that bind us back to God.* 
One of the lingering echoes of our pris- 
tine dignity when we walked with God 
in the Garden in the cool of the day is 
the feeling, everywhere prevalent, that 
he somehow still holds converse with us. 

To the calm judgment of a Baconian 
logician this proves nothing. Is it not 
just possible, however, that there are 
more things in heaven and earth than the 
inductive sages can demonstrate by their 
system of reasoning ? Is it quite neces- 
sary to assume that all truth, particularly 
such as falls outside the province of the 
five physical senses, must be classified 
under the formula quod erat demonstran- 
dum ? How, then, about the things that 
are " spiritually discerned " ? 

This is not to say, however, that a dem- 

* The word " religion " is held by many to be from re~ 
ligare, meaning " to bind back." 



Antecedent Presumption 3 

onstration of the truth of Scripture can- 
not be -made. Far from it But we 
thus justify our beginning this little 
book with certain universal facts which 
furnish only circumstantial evidence ; 
facts which, like the ergo in cogito ergo 
sum, draw on the imagination. They do 
not land us in the safe harbor of convic- 
tion ; but they make it pretty certain that 
the harbor is somewhere and that, with 
favoring winds, we may presently sail 
into it. In other words, they create a 
presumption in favor of the argument 
lying farther on. 

I 

We say, then, at the outset, that // there 
is a God anywhere in the universe, and if 
we are his children, he cannot fail to com- 
municate with us in some way. To think 
otherwise would be to assume that he 
is either unable or unwilling to do so. 
In the former case he would not be om- 
nipotent; in the latter case he would 



4 The Scriptures 

not be kind, and in either case we should 
have no practical interest in him because 
he would not be God. 

II 

Our second step brings us to the as- 
sumption that // God reveals himself at all 
it will probably be in a human form. 

He is said to have created man in his 
own image and after his likeness, the 
highest of and dominant among the 
orders of life. Is not this, therefore, the 
form in which he would probably em- 
body himself, if he is to embody himself 
at all? 

It is worthy of note that the doctrine 
of the incarnation, so far from being the 
sole possession of the Christian Church, 
is practically universal ; though often- 
times so vague and even grotesque as to 
furnish a pathetic commentary on the 
inadequacy of human wisdom to answer 
human need. From which we infer 
that it is manifestly in accord with reason, 



Antecedent Presumption 5 

in so far as reason is represented in the 
intuitions of the race. The false reli- 
gions abound in avatars and theophanies, 
vain gropings toward a true embodiment 
of God.* 

Men search for God in nature ; and be- 
hold the Pantheon ! Here are gods 
from hill and valley ; nymphs, dryads, 
nereids, deifications of nature in every 
form. Men worship the sun, the scara- 
basus, great Moloch with his fiery arms, 
a lizard, a crocodile, an onion. O the 
lamentable depths to which the race 

* " God's general revelation of himself is by fixed laws of 
order which know no pity, which show no forgiveness, which 
are indifferent to the interests of individuals, which conceal 
the divine character in some respects while they reveal it in 
others. God's special revelation of himself by intervening 
among these laws in miraculous acts and inspired words brings 
him nearer to individual hearts, and yet it leaves him far away ; 
for, after all, but signs and sounds have been given, not him- 
self ; he is himself still shrouded in darkness, still hidden 
where no man can approach him. Can he come yet nearer 
man, that man may draw closer to him ? Christianity an- 
swers, and its answer is Christ, — the person, the character and 
the work of Christ." Doctor Robert Flint in " Faiths of the 
Worlds 



6 The Scriptures 

has fallen in its eagerness to find or 
make a suitable symbol of the invisible 
God! 

They search for him in philosophy with 
no better result. The thinkers of the 
Orient ended their researches in a poly- 
theistic deification of the universe ; affirm- 
ing that all things are God. The Occi- 
dentals, on the other hand, arrived at 
pantheism ; affirming that God is all things. 
These ultimates were equally false and 
equally true.* 

Shall God be evolved, then, from the 
inner consciousness ? The utmost that a 
man can do in this direction is to project 
himself in large dimensions on the skies, 
like the Brocken of the Alps. As there 
are many men of many minds the result 

* Thales professed to have discovered in water the potency 
of life. Xenophanes proclaimed that nothing could be more 
divine than thought. Plato anticipated the investigations of 
modern scientists who declare that the Ultimate is all-pervad- 
ing law or force. The Stoics were Agnostics, giving up the 
quest in despair ; saying, like Fichte, " We know nothing, 
not even that we know nothing." 



Antecedent Presumption 7 

must be a corresponding multiplicity of 
gods. 

How then can God unveil himself? 
We have exhausted our resources. The 
world grows weary of seeking him. 
The fulness of time is the hour of 
despair. He now appears, as announced 
in the protevangel, u The seed of woman 
shall bruise the serpent's head," The 
great Father desires to communicate 
with his children. Our human medium 
of communication is language. The 
"word" of the Father shall be articu- 
lated for his children's use. The Word 
is made flesh and dwells among us.* 

God is manifest in flesh. Theanthropos ! 
The child wrapped in swaddling bands 
is the very God that sat upon the circle 
of the universe and called into being 
things that were not. The little hand, 
that lies, pink and dimpled, on its mother's 
breast, is the same that spun the new- 
created worlds into space, and rolls the 

* See Appendix A. 



8 The Scriptures 

rattling thunders through the skies. The 
lips that murmur in response to her lul- 
laby are destined to speak the words 
whereat, in the process of the centuries, 
the thrones of the Caesars shall fall in ir- 
remediable ruin and give way to a king- 
dom of truth and righteousness. He hath 
upon his vesture and his thigh a name 
written — a name to be made clearer and 
clearer in the logic of events — " King of 
kings and Lord of lords/' 

The truth thus stated is fundamental to 
Christianity. It bears the same relation 
to our doctrinal system that a mainspring 
bears to a watch. Every pin and wheel 
and lever of the mechanism is more 
or less important ; but break the main- 
spring and the watch stops. 

Not only so, this doctrine is the touch- 
stone of Christian sincerity ; as it is 
written, "Hereby know we the Spirit 
of God: every spirit that confesseth 
that Jesus Christ is come in flesh is 
of God : and every spirit that confesseth 



Antecedent Presumption 9 

not Jesus is not of God" (1 John iv. 
2).* 

Ill 

This brings us to the third step in our 
presumption ; namely, If God were to re- 
veal himself in human form he would prob- 
ably supplement and, complement that In- 
carnation by a Scripture. 

Otherwise how would the Incarnation 
be of any practical use beyond its own 
place and time ? The true religion must, 
presumably, be coextensive with all races 
and generations. It must extend its 
beneficence not only " from the river to 
the ends of the earth' ' but from Adam 
to the last man. In order to accomplish 
this an Incarnation of God, unless other 
provision was made, would have to be 
not only ubiquitous but contemporane- 
ous with the whole human race ! Now 
Christ lived in a small corner of a remote 
portion of the earth, during a brief period 
of only thirty-three years. It is claimed, 

* See Appendix B. 



io The Scriptures 

however, that the benefits of that short 
and circumscribed life are made both 
universal and perpetual by the Scriptures 
which contain the record of it. In the 
Old Testament he is set forth prophetic- 
ally as One who should, in the fulness of 
time, be born of a virgin, and whose 
name should be called Immanuel, 
"which is, being interpreted, God-wi th- 
us." In the New Testament he is set 
forth as the historic Incarnation of Deity. 
In the Old and New Testaments, com- 
bined he is presented to all ages and gen- 
erations, from the beginning to the end 
of the world, as God manifest in flesh for 
the deliverance of the world from sin. 

It is difficult to imagine how God 
could have made himself known to men 
in any other way. We are not unaware 
of the importance of natural theology ; 
but nature "speaks a various tongue." 
The vernal winds whisper one thing and 
Euroclydon screams another. A stranger 
in a strange land, gazing at the stars, 



Antecedent Presumption 1 1 

solaces his loneliness with the thought 
that they* are shining also on his distant 
loved ones ; but that does not answer the 
purpose of a letter from home. Cole- 
ridge in the Valley of Chamounix hears 
" all the signs and wonders of the ele- 
ments " echoing God ; but this falls in- 
finitely short of the satisfaction he feels 
on opening the Book and seeing his 
Father's name ; a satisfaction which he 
expresses thus, " It finds me." 

It is not unnatural, I say, that God's 
children in the far country should look 
for such a letter from home. And they 
all do. Witness the sacred books of all 
the nations. Poor counterfeits, indeed, 
but how pathetic ! They certify to a 
universal longing. The expatriates have 
been "watching the mails" from the 
beginning of the ages. Is there, then, 
no word from God ? 

Enter, the Bible with its claim. But 
how shall we know that the Bible is 
the veritable Word of God? Why 



12 The Scriptures 

not the Vedas, the Tripitaka, the 
Zend-Avesta, the Analects of Con- 
fucius or the Koran ? Reason must an- 
swer. All, including the Bible, are 
bound to stand or fall upon their com- 
parative merits. And the question is 
not, Which is the best? but, Which is 
the one ? For truth is one, absolute and 
exclusive. And it should be obvious 
that when God reveals the truth, he 
makes no mistakes ; he kindles no false 
beacons ; he tells no lies. 

In this inquiry we must be guided by 
internal evidence. Here is one of the 
functions of scholarship. It kindles the 
fires under all the sacred books ; if they 
burn, so be it. The true Word must 
come from the flames without so much 
as the smell of smoke upon it. Let those 
who doubt the veracity of Scripture turn 
on the fuming and corrosive acids of 
adverse criticism. It must abide the 
issue. And, perpetually, the world looks 
on. 



Antecedent Presumption 13 

As to the result, every man must judge 
for himself whether the Bible verifies its 
claim or not. But history has some- 
what to say. The " logic of events is 
irrefutable. It is a significant fact that 
the pathway of the centuries is lined with 
discredited and discarded oracles. The 
sacred books of antiquity were weighed 
successively in the balance and found 
wanting. Where is the Egyptian " Book 
of the Dead " ? It survives only in frag- 
ments deciphered from mummy-crypts 
and bands of byssus. Where are the 
mythologies of the Greeks, the Romans 
and the Norsemen ? Where are the 
philosophies of Greece ? Of devotees 
they have practically none ; the spectres 
of disappointment are their only 
mourners. And of the sacred books of 
Buddhism, Brahmanism and Islam, 
which still survive, three things must be 
observed : first, infallibility is not claimed 
for them ; second, they have no calculable 
following among the civilized nations of 



14 The Scriptures 

the earth ; and third, they represent re- 
ligions which are stricken with death. 

Meanwhile, what of the Bible ? It is 
the Book of Christendom — that charmed 
circle which includes practically all the 
light and life of these days. It is the 
center of a controversy which represents 
the mental and moral energy of the 
world. It counts among its friends and 
defenders an ever increasing number of 
those who are distinguished for character 
and culture. Its enemies contribute to 
its triumph and perpetuity by their as- 
saults upon it. " Hammer away, ye 
rebel bands ; your hammers break, God's 
anvil stands ! ' It may be confidently 
affirmed that more people are reading 
the Bible to-day than ever before ; and 
— as certified by the roll-call of the uni- 
versal church — more people than ever are 
affixing their faith to it. We do not say 
that this proves the truth of the Bible, 
by any means, but only that it opens the 
way. It warrants us in affirming that it 



Antecedent Presumption 15 

looks as if there might, perhaps, be 
something in the claim that it is the 
veritable Word of God. 

IV 

Our fourth step brings us to a full 
statement of our antecedent presumption, 
to wit : If God were to reveal himself in 
both human form and in Scripture, the Man 
and the Book would be in perfect accord with 
each other. 

On the one hand, the Book would be 
not only true, in the necessity of the 
case, but a complete setting forth of God 
so far as it is important that man should 
know him. It does not fall within the 
writer's province, at this time, to traverse 
the argument for the authenticity and 
trustworthiness of Scripture except so 
far as that is covered by the teachings of 
Christ. Let it suffice here to say that 
the Bible claims to be the written Word 
of God. 

On the other hand, a man claiming to 



1 6 The Scriptures 

be incarnate God would have to be, in 
the necessity of the case, a true and com- 
plete revelation of God in all his practical 
relations with us. He would need to be, 
as it were, the articulate speech of God 
addressed to men. And this is precisely 
the claim which is made for Jesus Christ. 
" In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was 
God. And the Word became flesh and 
dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, 
glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father), full of grace and truth " (Johni. 
1, 14). As we are made acquainted with 
one another through the medium of 
language, so the eternal Logos in his in- 
carnation becomes, as it were, the artic- 
ulated speech of God, by means of which 
we know him. 

If these respective claims of Christ and 
the Bible are true, we should expect them 
to agree, each with the other, perfectly. 
If they meet this requirement, we must 
conclude that the argument for the truth 



Antecedent Presumption 17 

of either is strengthened an hundredfold. 
This then is the question : Does the Bible 
bear an unequivocal testimony to the 
claims of Jesus as the Incarnate Word, 
and does Jesus bear witness, correspond- 
ingly, to the claim of the Scriptures as 
the written Word of God ? If so, in the 
two together, constituting the binomial 
Word, we may confidently rest as in a 
full, true and final revelation of God. 

It is only with the latter half of this 
question that the writer has to do. His 
task is to discover and state \ as clearly as 
possible, what the Incarnate Word has to say 
respecting the Written Word of God. 



CHAPTER II 

The Actual Attitude of Jesus to- 
ward the Scriptures. 

Ik TO amount of a priori argument, 
/ Y/ such as the patient reader found in 
Chapter first, can settle the matter 
in hand. It is easy enough to lay down 
antecedent presumptions and probabili- 
ties ; but the question, after all, is purely 
a question of fact : What was Jesus's 
attitude toward the Scriptures ? The 
obvious way to arrive at a satisfactory 
answer is by making a comprehensive 
survey of his life and teaching, so far forth 
as they have any reference whatsoever to 
the matter before us. 
18 



Actual Attitude 19 

/. The Preparation 

Observe, at the outset, Jesus knew the 
Scriptures. In his childhood he was in- 
structed in them. He was surrounded 
by a religious atmosphere. The mezuzah 
with its passage of Scripture * was affixed 
to the doorpost of his home. Joseph and 
Mary were loyal Jews and, as such, nur- 
tured and instructed the Holy Child in 
the sacred Word. At the first this duty 
would naturally devolve on the mother. 
" It needed not the extravagant lauda- 
tions, nor the promises held out by the 
rabbis," says Edersheim, "to incite Jew- 
ish women to this duty. If they were 
true to their descent, it would come al- 
most naturally to them. But while the 
earliest religious teaching would, of ne- 
cessity, come from the lips of the mother, 
it was the father who was ' bound to 
teach his son.' To impart to the child 
knowledge of the Torah conferred as 

* " The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming 
in from this time forth and even forevermore " (Ps. cxxi. 8). 



20 The Scriptures 

great spiritual distinction, as if a man had 
received the Law itself on Mount Horeb. 
Every other engagement, even the neces- 
sary meal, should give place to this para- 
mount duty ; nor should it be forgotten 
that, while here real labor was necessary, 
it would never prove fruitless. That man 
was of the profane vulgar (an Am ha- 
arets\ who had sons but failed to bring 
them up in the knowledge of the 
Law."* 

At the age of five or six Jesus was sent 

* Directly the child learned to speak, his religious instruc- 
tion was to begin — no doubt, with such verses of Holy Scrip- 
ture as composed that part of the Jewish liturgy, which an- 
swers to our creed. Then would follow other passages from 
the Bible, short prayers, and select sayings of the sages. Spe- 
cial attention was given to the culture of the memory, since 
forgetfulness might prove as fatal in its consequences as ig- 
norance or neglect of the Law. Very early the child must 
have been taught what might be called his birthday-text — 
some verse of Scripture beginning, or ending with, or at least 
containing, the same letters at his Hebrew name. This guard- 
ian-promise the child would insert in its daily prayers. The 
earliest hymns taught would be the Psalms for the days of 
the week, or festive Psalms, such as the Hallel, or those con- 
nected with the festive pilgrimages to Zion." Edersheim's 
" Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah." 



Actual Attitude 21 

to the rabbinical school, where the Bible 
was the only text-book. The course of 
study began with Leviticus and continued 
through the Pentateuch ; after which 
the prophets and then the poetical books 
were taken up. Much attention was 
given to the memorizing of certain por- 
tions, particularly the important pre- 
scripts of the law and the acrostic Psalms. 
At ten years of age the pupil was per- 
mitted to enter on the study of the 
Gemara and the fundamental doctrines of 
the Jewish faith. 

In this connection the further words 
of Edersheim, himself a Jew, are signifi- 
cant : " From his intimate familiarity with 
Holy Scripture, in its every detail, we 
may be allowed to infer that the home 
of Nazareth, however humble, possessed 
a precious copy of the sacred volume in 
its entirety. At any rate, we know that 
from earliest childhood it must have 
formed the meat and drink of the God- 
man. The words of the Lord, as re- 



22 The Scriptures 

corded by St. Matthew and St. Luke, 
also imply that the Holy Scriptures which 
he read were in the original Hebrew, 
and that they were written in the square, 
or Assyrian, characters. Indeed, as the 
Pharisees and Sadducees always appealed 
to the Scriptures in the original, Jesus 
could not have met them on any other 
ground ; and it was this which gave such 
point to his frequent expostulations with 
them: ' Have ye not read ? ' But far other 
thoughts than theirs gathered around his 
study of the Old Testament of the Scrip- 
tures. When comparing their long dis- 
cussions on the letter and law of Scripture 
with his references to the Word of God, 
it seems as if it were quite another book 
which was handled. As we gaze into 
the vast glory of meaning which he opens 
to us ; follow the shining track of heaven- 
ward living to which he points ; behold 
the lines of symbol, type, and prediction 
converging in the grand unity of that 
kingdom which became reality in him ; 



Actual Attitude 23 

or listen as, alternately, some question of 
his seems to rive the darkness as with 
flash of sudden light, or some sweet prom- 
ise of old to lull the storm, some earnest 
lesson to quiet the tossing waves — we 
catch faint, it may be far-off, glimpses of 
how, in that early child-life, when the 
Holy Scriptures were his special study, he 
must have read them, and what thoughts 
must have been kindled by their light. 
And thus better than before can we 
understand it : ' And the Child grew, 
and waxed strong in spirit, filled with 
wisdom, and the grace of God was upon 
him.'"* 

In the single authoritative glimpse 
which we have into the early life of Jesus 
we find him, at twelve years of age, in 
the temple sitting in the midst of the doc- 
tors, " hearing them and asking questions 
and answering " (Luke ii. 41-50). It was 
probably in that apartment of the temple 
known as the Hall Gazith ; and in all the 

* Edersheim's " Life and Times of fesus the Messiah" 



24 The Scriptures 

world there was no more distinguished 
body of scholars than those accustomed 
to assemble there. Of the number were 
Annas, the high priest and president of 
the Sanhedrin ; Ben Uzziel, the Targum- 
ist who wrote the Chaldee Paraphrase; 
Joseph of Arimathea, a man of wealth 
and character ; Ben Buta, who had been 
blinded by Herod for his devotion to the 
Jewish cause ; Nicodemus ; the aged 
Hillel, and Shammai, his rival ; and Ga- 
maliel, a professor in the University of 
Jerusalem, known as " the Flower of the 
Law/' In the midst of such a distin- 
guished assemblage stood the boy of 
twelve, "hearing, asking questions and 
answering them." 

No intimation is given as to the themes 
traversed in this remarkable conference ; 
but we cannot go far wrong in suppos- 
ing that it had to do particularly with 
the supreme problems of life to wit: 
God, man and the reconciliation of 
man with God. The basis of the con- 



Actual Attitude 25 

ference was doubtless the Holy Scrip- 
tures, for here the wonderful Boy and 
the learned Rabbis were on common 
ground ; and the one truth about which 
the conversation turned was, to a moral 
certainty, the prophecies of the com- 
ing of the Messiah, which were called 
"the Hope " or " Consolation of Israel/' 
It would be scarcely possible for such a 
company of Biblical experts, under such 
circumstances, to refrain from discussing 
it. The Boy in the midst of them would 
ask, " Who is this Messiah ? When he 
cometh, how will ye know him ?" And 
they would answer, " He is to be King 
of Kings, ' great David's greater Son/ 
In the fulness of time he will appear to 
deliver Israel ; and he will reign in glory 
among us." The Boy would ask, "What 
then is the meaning of this scripture, ' A 
virgin shall conceive and bear a son and 
call his name Immanuel, which being in- 
terpreted is, God with us '; or of this, € He 
is a man of sorrows and acquainted with 



26 The Scriptures 

grief, and we hid as it were our faces 
from him ; he is wounded for our trans- 
gressions and bruised for our iniquities, 
that by his stripes we might be healed ' ? 
Or what is the meaning of your sacrifices ? 
Why is the blood of the Paschal lamb 
sprinkled on the lintel of every doorway 
and upon all the sacred things of the tem- 
ple ? Why this blood, blood, blood every- 
where?" And they could only say in 
their bewilderment, "It is written that 
if a man sin and bring a lamb without 
spot or blemish to the altar, his sin is 
taken from him." "But how can the 
blood of a lamb atone for sin ? How can 
it wash away the crimson stain ? " And 
they knew not. This boy of twelve 
was their Messiah ; and they did not rec- 
ognize him. He was himself the anti- 
type of all their sacrifices. His was 
the blood that should cleanse from sin. 
Was he aware of his personality and 
mission ? Aye ; always. The realization 
of his mission began with his dawning 



Actual Attitude 27 

consciousness. He knew who he was, 
whence* he had come and what his 
errand was. Else what did he mean 
when he said to his mother, " Wist ye 
not that I must be about my Father's 
business?" It is true that, in assuming 
mortal form, he "emptied himself" of 
the outward tokens of his Godhood ; but 
never for a moment in such manner as to 
become ignorant of his mission or unable 
to perform it.* 

77. His Inauguration into His Ministry 

The time having come for the begin- 
ning of his great work, he one day closed 
the carpenter shop and never returned to 

* The proof -text of "the Kenosis" or emptying of Christ 
is Philippians ii. 5—1 1. It affirms of Christ that he laid aside 
not his Godhood but the " form " of it ; not his essential glory- 
but the "fashion" of it. In taking upon him "the form of a 
servant " he held the exercise of his divine attributes in abey- 
ance ; as a King lays aside his crown, scepter and purple robe, 
but always within reach. On frequent occasions he exercised 
his omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence ; and never 
was he so divested of them as to endanger the perfect exercise 
of his functions as the Christ of God. 



28 The Scriptures 

it. The work to which he had looked 
forward with desire, saying, " I have a 
baptism to be baptized with and how 
is my soul straitened until I shall ac- 
complish it," was before him. 

Observe how, from this time forward, he 
made the Scriptures his rule of faith and 
practice. He betook himself, straight- 
way, to the Jordan, where John was 
baptizing, and presented himself "to be 
baptized of him." And when John re- 
fused saying, " I have need to be baptized 
of thee, and comest thus to me ? " he 
had immediate recourse to the Scrip- 
tures, replying, " Suffer it now ; for thus 
it become th us to fulfil all righteousness 1 ' 
(Matt. iii. 13-17). In the Law it was 
prescribed that Aaron and his sons should 
be inaugurated into the holy office of the 
priesthood by being " washed with water 
at the door of the Tabernacle of the con- 
gregation " (Ex. xxix. 4). It was incum- 
bent on Jesus, as he entered upon the 
work of priestly sacrifice and intercession, 



Actual Attitude 29 

to comply with and complete that law. 
In this experience he struck the keynote 
of his entire ministry, which was in per- 
fect accord with the Scriptures every 
way. The divine approval of this act was 
signified at his baptism by the descent of 
the Spirit and the Voice from heaven, 
saying, " Thou art my beloved Son ; in 
thee I am well pleased." 

He was a loyal Jew, and the New 
Economy had not yet begun. If a son 
of Levi must be washed at the brazen 
laver on assuming his ministerial func- 
tions, so should Jesus ; but instead of the 
temple we have the deep valley and the 
overarching skies ; instead of the laver, 
the swift-flowing Jordan ; instead of the 
anointing, the descent of the dove. Now 
this Jesus is the source and center of all 
right precepts and injunctions ; his heart 
is the throne of law ; the writings of 
Sinai are the flashings of his eye ; yet 
under the Law he bows and passes into 
servitude. Though equal with God, he 



30 The Scriptures 

takes upon him the form of a servant and 
becomes obedient. The inaugural rite 
is his bounden duty ; to obey is better 
than sacrifice. " Thus it becometh me, 
as the ' Son of man ' — that is, the ideal 
and representative Man — to fulfil all 
righteousness/' If he thus respected the 
humblest duty, surely the same is becom- 
ing in us. 

His next step was equally significant. 
From the Jordan he was " led up of the 
Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted 
of the devil. ,, In the continuous conflict 
of those forty days, thrice did the ad- 
versary assault the citadel of his character 
and thrice was he met and repelled with 
the Sword of the Spirit. To the first 
temptation which was addressed to the 
physical infirmity of Jesus he answered, 
"-// is written, ' Man shall not live by 
bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God/ ' To 
the second, which was directed at his 
Messianic consciousness and fortified by 



Actual Attitude 31 

a cleverly distorted reference to Scripture, 
he answered, " // is written, ' Thou shalt 
not make trial of the Lord thy God/' 
To the third, which was a specious at- 
tempt to divert him from his purpose of 
establishing the kingdom through his 
vicarious death, he answered, " Get thee 
hence, Satan : for it is written, ' Thou shalt 
worship the Lord thy God, and him only 
shalt thou serve. ' Then the devil leaveth 
him ; and behold, angels came and min- 
istered unto him." ."It is written!" 
" It is written ! " " It is written ! " 
Where ? In the Scriptures. Thus Jesus 
not only vindicated his own character, as 
against all approach of evil, but tested 
triumphantly the mettle of his weapon, 
" the sword of the Spirit, which is the 
word of God " (Eph. vi. 17). 

Then back to the Jordan he turned 
his steps. The Baptist was still preach- 
ing and baptizing there. On seeing 
Jesus he said, " Behold, the Lamb of 
God, that taketh away the sin of the 



32 The Scriptures 

world ! ,j Here is a plain reference to 
the Messiah, in whom all the sacrificial 
rites of Israel were to find their fulfill- 
ment, whose blood was to be shed for 
the cleansing from sin. Jesus accepted 
the title without demur, and then and 
there gathered about him the little group 
of disciples who were to follow him dur- 
ing his earthly ministry, forming the 
nucleus of that great and ever increasing 
multitude who were destined to serve 
him through the ages. 

The record states that John and An- 
drew " abode with him that day." It 
would appear that in their interview with 
Jesus he must have opened the Scrip- 
tures unto them respecting the " Hope 
of Israel ; " for Andrew immediately 
sought his brother Simon saying, " We 
have found the Messiah (which is, being 
interpreted, Christ)." And the day fol- 
lowing, Philip, after a like interview, 
sought his friend Nathanael saying, " We 
have found him, of whom Moses in the 



Actual Attitude 33 

law and the prophets wrote, Jesus of 
Nazareth, the son of Joseph." And 
when Nathanael objected increduously, 
" Can any good thing come out of Naz- 
areth ? M he answered, " Come and see ; ' 
from which we infer that Christ, in all 
such conferences with his early disciples, 
made it clear that he was the one " whom 
kings and prophets longed to see and died 
without the sight/' Such a result could 
only have been achieved by an argument 
based upon the Scriptures to which these 
men affixed their faith. 

III. The Judean Ministry 

Thus Christ began his public work by 
opening, expounding and putting into 
practice the Holy Scriptures. And 
thenceforward during the three years of 
his eventful life, we observe how inces- 
santly he preached the Word. 

The first authoritative act of his minis- 
try was at the Passover, A. D. 27, when 
he purged the temple with a scourge of 



34 The Scriptures 

small cords. In answer to the religious 
leaders who indignantly asked, "What 
sign showest thou unto us, seeing that 
thou doest these things ? " he said 
" Destroy this temple, and in three days 
I will raise it up." That this was in- 
tended to be a reference to such proph- 
ecies as bore upon his resurrection is 
evident from what follows : " When 
therefore he was raised from the dead, 
his disciples remembered that he spake 
this ; and they believed the Scripture and 
the word which Jesus had said " (John ii. 
13-22). 

The next incident in the ministry of 
Jesus was his interview with Nicodemus 
(John iii. 1-21). This, also, illustrates 
his habit of teaching along Scriptural 
lines. The doctrine of regeneration, an- 
nounced as a mystery, was followed by 
the practical and consequential doctrine 
of justification by faith, which he set 
forth in terms of kindergarten simplicity 
by an object lesson, " As Moses lifted up 



Actual Attitude 35 

the serpent in the wilderness, even so 
must the Son of man be lifted up ; that 
whosoever believeth may in him have 
eternal life/' Thus his last appeal was 
to the Scriptures. In the practical appli- 
cation of truth, the great Preacher always 
brought his hearers, back to the Word of 
God. 

IV. The Galilean Ministry 

The interview of Jesus with the wom- 
an of Samaria on his way to Galilee, is 
another instance of his Scriptural method 
(John iv. 1-42). The references to the 
well which Jacob digged, to the moun- 
tain of w r orship, to the Judaic source of 
salvation and to the spiritual nature of 
the Deity are all biblical. And when, 
at the climacteric point of his interview, 
the doctrine of the Messiah was reached, 
it was like the lifting of a veil. Is there 
anything anywhere in the teaching of 
Jesus, clearer, more positive or more il- 
luminating as to his relation to the rites 



36 The Scriptures 

and symbols and prophecies of the Old 
Economy, than his closing words " I that 
speak unto thee am he " ? 

The first reported sermon of Jesus was 
at Nazareth. He had been teaching and 
working miracles for some months, in 
Judea and Galilee, when he returned to 
his native village. It is safe to say that 
his townsmen were on the qui vive to 
hear him. On the Sabbath he went to 
the synagogue "as his custom was." It 
was the rule to open the service with the 
singing of a Psalm. Then came the 
reading of a portion of the Pentateuch, 
followed by a lesson from the Prophets.* 
It was customary at this point to request 
any distinguished stranger, known as a 
loyal Jew, who chanced to be present, 
to act as Sheliach Tsibbur, or " Messenger 
of the Congregation/' on whom de- 
volved the special duty of expounding the 
lesson of the day. The lesson on this 

* See Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 
Book III. Chap. X. 



Actual Attitude 37 

particular day was from the sixty-first of 
Isaiah, and Jesus was invited to read and 
discourse upon it. The chazzan or 
" minister" approached the chest and 
brought from it reverently the scroll of 
the prophecy, which, being carefully un- 
wound from its cloth wrappings, was 
placed in the hands of Jesus, who opened 
it and read : " The Spirit of the Lord is 
upon me, because he hath anointed me 
to preach good tidings to the poor ; he 
hath sent me to proclaim release to the 
captives, and recovering of sight to the 
blind, to set at liberty them that are 
bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year 
of the Lord" (Luke iv. 18, 19). The 
interest of the congregation is indicated 
in the words " And the eyes of all in the 
synagogue were fastened on him." His 
discourse is not given in full ; but it is 
said to have been distinctly expository, 
and its personal bearing on the great 
question of the Messiahship is affirmed in 
the brief summary : " To-day hath this 



38 The Scriptures 

scripture been fulfilled in your ears'' At 
the conclusion of his discourse all were 
agreed in bearing him witness and won- 
dered at the words of grace which pro- 
ceeded out of his mouth ; " but they 
were not prepared to accept his interpre- 
tation of Isaiah's prophecy as applying to 
himself. " Is not this Joseph's son ? ' 
they asked. And when they demanded 
"a sign/' he reminded them, with 
Scriptural illustrations, that " no prophet 
is acceptable in his own country ; M 
whereupon they " were filled with wrath 
and rose up and cast him forth out of 
the city." 

The sermon at Nazareth may serve as 
an example of the Master's method in 
all his subsequent preaching. Ex uno, 
disce omnes. Wherever he went he 
preached the Word. "And many hearing 
him were astonished, saying, Whence 
hath this man these things ? and, What 
is the wisdom that is given unto this 
man ? " (Mark. vi. 2). In all such cases 



Actual Attitude 39 

the comprehensive answer of Jesus was 
" My teaching is not mine, but his that 
sent me " (John vii. 16), which, while in- 
dicating his mysterious essential union 
with the Father, was but another way of 
expressing his absolute loyalty to and ac- 
cord with the written Word of God. 

On leaving Nazareth he came to Caper- 
naum which was to be, thenceforth, the 
center of his work. " And straightway, 
on the Sabbath day, he entered into the 
synagogue and taught. And they were 
astonished at his teaching ; for he taught 
them as having authority and not as the 
scribes " (Mark i. 21, 22). The word 
here rendered "authority " is the Greek 
e^oucria, which designates an inward 
source. He taught not as the scribes, 
who referred for their authority to other 
teachers, but as one who could say, " I 
am the Truth." He taught not like the 
prophets, who introduced their discourses 
with "Thus saith the Lord," since he 
and the Father were in such complete 



4-0 The Scriptures 

harmony that their word was one ; where- 
fore he spoke on this wise : c< Verily, 
verily, I say unto you." How bold is 
this manifesto ! Who is this that sets his 
ipse dixit against precedent, tradition, the 
teaching of all ancient worthies ? How 
this " I say unto you " goes crashing 
through the elaborate fabrics which had 
been set up by ecclesiastical courts and 
councils ! Here is a tone of authority 
which finds no parallel except in the 
thunders of Sinai. No other preacher 
can dogmatize in this manner. He could 
speak thus not only because of his singu- 
lar oneness with the Father but because, 
also, of his deep insight into the meaning 
of the divine Word and his absolute loy- 
alty to it. 

With Capernaum as his center of opera- 
tions he made a number of memorable 
itineraries among the villages of Galilee, 
" preaching the good tidings of the king- 
dom of God." His plan was to enter 
the synagogues and discourse from the 



Actual Attitude 41 

Scriptures, according to custom, respect- 
ing the great doctrines of which his own 
Messiahship was chiefest of all. 

The second Passover in the ministry 
of Jesus found him back at Jerusalem 
(John v. 1). On his arrival he visited the 
porches of Bethesda., where he healed a 
paralytic on the Sabbath. The religious 
leaders at once accused him of violating 
the Sabbath law ; whereupon he preached 
the wonderful discourse recorded in the 
fifth of John in which he showed his 
devotion to the Scriptures, even to their 
last jot and tittle, while overwhelming 
the scribes and Pharisees with the most 
scathing denunciations on account of the 
sacrilegious liberties which they had taken 
with them. In these discourses he not 
only vindicates his own authority by rea- 
son of his singular relation to the Father 
as his incarnate Word, but yokes with it 
inseparably the authority of the written 
Word ; as when he says, " The works 
which the Father hath given me to ac- 



42 The Scriptures 

complish, the very works that I do, bear 
witness of me that the Father hath sent 
me. And the Father that sent me, he 
hath borne witness of me. Ye have 
neither heard his voice at any time, nor 
seen his form. And ye have not his word 
abiding in you : for whom he sent, him 
ye believe not. Ye search the Scriptures ; 
because ye think that in them ye have eternal 
life ; and these are they which bear witness 
of me ; and ye will not come to me, that 
ye may have life. I receive not glory 
from men. But I know you, that ye have 
not the love of God in yourselves. I am 
come in my Father's name, and ye re- 
ceive me not : if another shall come in 
his own name, him ye will receive. How 
can ye believe, which receive glory one of 
another, and the glory that cometh from 
the only God ye seek not ? Think not 
that I will accuse you to the Father : 
there is one that accuseth you, even 
Moses, on whom ye have set your hope. 
For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe 



Actual Attitude 43 

me : for he "wrote of me. Bat if ye believe 
not his writings, how shall ye believe my 
words V (John v. 36-47). 

All his preaching, during this brief 
visit at Jerusalem, was of the same tenor. 
It was a continual tribute to the truth 
and trustworthiness of Scripture. When 
the disciples were taken to task for going 
through the tilled fields on the Sabbath 
and rubbing the wheat in their hands in 
order to satisfy their hunger, he defended 
them by an appeal to Scripture ; " Have 
ye not read in the law, that on the Sabbath 
day the priests in the temple profane the 
Sabbath, and are guiltless ? But I say 
unto you, that one greater than the 
temple is here. But if ye had known 
what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and 
not sacrifice, ye would not have con- 
demned the guiltless" (Matt. xii. 5-7). 

A little later, while in attendance at 
one of the synagogues, he healed a man 
with a withered hand ; and when there 
was an outcry against this obvious viola- 



44 The Scriptures 

tion of the rabbinical toldoth, his answer 
was an appeal from the false interpreta- 
tion and superfluous citations of the rab- 
bis to the original design and true signif- 
icance of the law (Matt. xii. 9-14). 

On returning to Capernaum he was 
" followed by a great multitude, when 
they had heard what great things he did." 
He spake to them, again and again, in 
the streets, on the hillsides, by the shore 
of the Lake : and always the burden of 
his discourse was " Return to the Word 
of God ! " 

It was somewhere about this time that 
he preached the Sermon on the Mount. 
Its Golden Text is, " Think not that I 
came to destroy the /aw, or the prophets : I 
came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily 
I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass 
away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise 
pass from the law, till all things be accom- 
plished. Whosoever therefore shall break one 
of these least commandments, and shall teach 
men so, shall be called least in the kingdom 



Actual Attitude 45 

of heaven : but whosoever shall do and teach 
them, he shall be called great in the king- 
dom of heaven " (Matt. v. 17 - 19). In the 
whole of this wonderful discourse he 
shows not only his perfect acquiescence 
in and devotion to the teachings of Holy 
Writ but his divine insight into its signif- 
icance. He ruthlessly exposes the errors 
in the Biblical expositions and interpre- 
tations of the scribes and elders — their 
toldoth, their eisegesis, their " tradi- 
tions " — and insists imperatively on get- 
ting back to the original and down into 
the uttermost meaning of things. It is 
not the voice of the destroyer but of the 
restorer that we hear in his "Ye have 
heard — but I say unto you! " 

One reason why " the common people 
heard him gladly" was because his 
preaching was so distinctly Scriptural. 
They believed in the Scriptures ; if ever 
there was a people against whom the 
charge of bibliolatry could justly be made 
it was these Jews. When they went to 



46 The Scriptures 

the synagogue it was with the desire and 
expectation of hearing a doctrinal or 
ethical discourse on that particular por- 
tion of the Scripture which was desig- 
nated as " the lesson of the day." An 
expression of personal opinion on the 
part of the preacher was of little interest 
to them ; as little, indeed, as it is to the 
people of these days. Who cares, at the 
back and bottom of the matter, what this 
or that Doctor of Divinity thinks about 
the great problems of eternity ? His 
breath is in his nostrils ; wherefore his 
experimental pilgrimages and peregrina- 
tions in Terra Incognita are no more im- 
portant than those of any other man. 
One can guess as well as another ; and 
every one can conjure up enough " ifs ,s 
and "perhapses" of his own without 
going to church for them. The people 
go to church to hear a preacher set 
forth plainly not what he supposes but 
what God says. They want the clear 
light of a Thus saith the Lord on the 



Actual Attitude 47 

problems along the heavenward way. 
If the man in the pulpit has nothing 
better to offer than hypotheses, based on 
no better authority than personal opin- 
ion, they may lend an ear for a while to 
his fine phrases but sooner or later they 
will quit him for another who can lean 
on Scripture and say Yea and Amen. 
Jesus preached in this positive manner. 
To his personal authority as the divine 
Son — an authority which he shared with 
no other preacher whatsoever — he added 
a constant appeal to the ultimate and con- 
clusive authority of the Scriptures : he 
"preached the Word" (Mark ii. 1, 2, 
et al.). In his miracles of healing he con- 
sistently honored it ; as when he said to 
the leper at Chorazin, " Go shew thy- 
self to the priest, and offer for thy cleans- 
ing, accordtJig as Moses comma?ided, for a 
testimony unto them" (Luke v. 14). 

It was about this time that John the 
Baptist, a prisoner in the castle of 
Machaerus, sent messengers to him ask- 



48 The Scriptures 

ing, " Art thou he that should eome or 
look we for another ? " The question 
having been answered in a most satisfac- 
tory and conclusive manner, he called 
the attention of the multitude to John 
himself as set forth in ancient prophecy ; 
and his words are in notable contrast with 
certain views of prophecy which are ad- 
vanced in our time. Hear him ; " What 
went ye out into the wilderness to be- 
hold? a reed shaken with the wind? 
But what went ye out to see ? a man 
clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they 
that wear soft raiment are in kings' 
houses. But wherefore went ye out ? to 
see a prophet? Yea, I say unto you, 
and much more than a prophet. This is 
he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send 
my messenger before thy face, who shall 
prepare thy way before thee. Verily I 
say unto you, Among them that are born 
of women there hath not arisen a greater 
than John the Baptist : yet, he that is 
but little in the kingdom of heaven is 



Actual Attitude 49 

greater than he. And from the days of 
John the Baptist until now the kingdom 
of heaven suffereth violence, and men of 
violence take it by force. For all the 
prophets and the law prophesied until John. 
And if ye are willing to receive it, this is 
Elijah that is to come. He that hath ears 
to hear, let him hear " (Matt. xi. 7-15). 

His credentials, as the divine Son, 
being called in question by the scribes 
and Pharisees, who clamored for a sign, 
he answered them by falling back on a 
notable sign given in the Scriptures 
(Matt. xii. 38-40) and put their unbelief 
to shame on this wise, " The queen of 
the south shall rise up in the judgment 
with this generation, and shall condemn 
it ; for she came from the ends of the 
earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon ; 
and, behold, a greater than Solomon is 
here " (Matt. xii. 42). 

A woman who chanced to be among 
his hearers was so carried away with 
enthusiasm that she cried, " Blessed is 

D 



50 The Scriptures 

the womb that bare thee and the breasts 
which thou didst suck ! " to which he 
answered, " Yea, rather, blessed are they 
that hear the word of God, and keep it" 
(Luke xi. 27-28). Was greater tribute 
than this ever paid to the Word of God ? 

At this point his teaching was largely 
in parables, and this method having been 
challenged he defended it by a reference 
to Scripture, showing that he was pursu- 
ing the divinely appointed path of in- 
struction : " Unto them is fulfilled the prophecy 
of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall 
hear, and shall in no wise understand ; 
and seeing ye shall see, and shall in no 
wise perceive : for this people's heart is 
waxed gross, and their ears are dull of 
hearing, and their eyes they have closed ; 
lest haply they should perceive with their 
eyes, and hear with their ears, and un- 
derstand with their heart, and should 
turn again, and I should heal them " 
(Matt. xiii. 14, 15). 

And when his disciples asked, in par- 



Actual Attitude 51 

ticular, for an interpretation of the par- 
able of " the sower r u:ho so r u;eth the Word," 
he said, " He that soweth the good seed 
is the Son of man " (Matt. xiii. 37). 

In the last of the series of parables, ut- 
tered on this occasion, he laid down a 
comprehensive rule of homiletics for all 
preachers and for all time ; " Have ye 
understood all these things ? They say 
unto him, Yea. And he said unto them, 
Therefore every scribe who hath been 
made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven 
is like unto a man that is a householder, 
who bringeth forth out of his treasure 
things new and old " (Matt. xiii. 51, 52). 
The preacher is here likened to an 
oriental host who receives a stranger into 
his home. Desirous of entertaining him 
he brings forth his wealth and spreads it 
before him. There were no banks or 
other places of safe deposit in those days. 
Treasure was buried in the ground or 
kept in a recess in the wall. The house- 
holder here goes to his treasury and brings 



52 The Scriptures 

out things new and old : antique coins ; 
necklaces worn by princes of long ago ; 
golden shields bearing the dint of old- 
time battles ; precious stones plucked 
from the crowns of captive kings ; the 
loot of the campaigns of ages. All these 
are spread before the eyes of his wonder- 
ing guest. Now, says Jesus, the scribe 
is the custodian of God's treasury. The 
preacher is a " scribe." It is his special 
function to expound the divine Word. 
The key is at his girdle. His business 
is to bring forth the wealth of Scripture, 
new truths and old truths, to dazzle the 
eyes. 

The Pharisees having brought an ac- 
cusation against Jesus, that he was " the 
friend of sinners " and that he "ate and 
drank with sinners," he made his defense 
on Scriptural grounds ; " Go and learn" 
he said, " what that meaneth, I will have 
mercy and not sacrifice" (Matt. ix. 13 cf. 
Hosea vi. 6). In this saying he intimated 
his reliance on Scripture, in its deep spirit- 



Actual Attitude 53 

ual significance, as the final arbiter in all 
questions of right and wrong. 

In his discourse at Capernaum, on the 
day following the miracle of the loaves, 
his assertion that he was himself the living 
bread of which if a man ate he should 
hunger no more, was openly resented by 
the Pharisees ; to whom he replied, "It 
is written in the prophets, 'And they shall 
be all taught of God.' Every man that 
hath heard and hath learned of the Father, 
cometh unto me" (John vi. 45, cf. Micah 
iv. 2 et al.). This is no vague reference 
to an all-pervasive voice in nature, nor 
yet to the specific word of any inspired 
writer, but rather to the whole tenor of 
the Scriptures as pointing to Christ. And 
he goes on to explain by an allusion to 
the manna in the wilderness : "I am the 
bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna 
in the wilderness, and they died. This 
is the bread which cometh down out of 
heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and 
not die. I am the living bread which 



54 The Scriptures 

came down out of heaven : if any man 
eat of this bread, he shall live forever : 
yea and the bread which I will give is my 
flesh, for the life of the world " (John vi. 
47-51). Thus, over and over again, he 
shows himself not merely a preacher of 
the Word but a consistent and unwavering 
believer in it. 

A complaint being made against the 
disciples for " transgressing the traditions 
of the elders " by eating without having 
previously washed their hands, he an- 
swered " Why do ye also transgress the 
commandment of God by your tradition ? ' 
(Matt. xv. 2, 3). He thus tore up the 
very foundations of their reasoning by 
announcing that no ecclesiastical prescript 
or human requirement whatsoever is for 
a moment to be compared with the Scrip- 
tures in binding force. They go for 
naught when they are at variance with 
the divine law. And, having laid down 
this fact, as a general proposition, the 
Master went on to emphasize it : " For 



Actual Attitude 55 

God said, Honor thy father and thy 
mother: and, He that speaketh evil of 
father or mother, let him die the death. 
But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his 
father or his mother, That wherewith 
thou mightest have been profited by me 
is given to God ; he shall not honor his 
father. And ye have made void the word 
of God because of your tradition. Ye 
hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you 
saying, This people honoreth me with 
their lips ; but their heart is far from me. 
But in vain do they worship me, teaching 
as their doctrines the precepts of men " 
(Matt. xv. 4-9). Could anything be 
stronger than this " God said — but ye 
say ? " Is it not obvious that to the mind 
of Jesus the Word was ultimate and 
there was no going beyond or getting 
behind it ? 

V. The Perean Ministry 

As Jesus purposed to be present at the 
celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, 



56 The Scriptures 

he set out with his disciples for the Holy 
City. This was that historic journey of 
which it is written, " He set his face 
steadfastly to go." The shadow of the 
cross was over him, but he swerved not 
an inch from his appointed path. Up 
to this time he had not clearly informed 
his disciples as to the fate awaiting him ; 
but now, as they journeyed, " he began 
to teach them that the Son of man must 
suffer many things and be rejected of the 
elders and chief priests and be killed and, 
after three days, rise again " (Mark viii. 
31). How was this "teaching" done? 
If anything is to be inferred from his in- 
variable custom, it was by " opening unto 
them the Scriptures/' It is easy to im- 
agine him, who from his childhood had 
dwelt in the atmosphere of revelation, 
reminding them not only of the many, 
many prophecies, but of the deep signifi- 
cance of all the sacrificial rites and sym- 
bols of the Old Economy, and showing 
how they pointed to him as the Lamb of 



Actual Attitude 57 

God. Indeed it is difficult to imagine 
how the truth which he desired to con- 
vey could have been impressed upon 
them in any other way. And when 
Peter, revolting at the thought of the 
Master's death, exclaimed " Be it far from 
thee ! Lord this shall not be unto thee ! " 
he rebuked him for offering a satanic 
suggestion against the vicarious sacrifice, 
saying, ic Get thee behind me, Satan ; for 
thou mindest not the things of God but 
the things of men." If this means any- 
thing, it indicates that Jesus, in foretell- 
ing his death, was following the red path 
of divine prophecy leading all through 
Scripture from the protevangel to the 
cross. It was not the path of human 
wisdom but the one which, in the Scrip- 
tures, was divinely marked out for him. 

It was in the course of this journey, 
probably, that the transfiguration oc- 
curred. Six days after the departure 
from Capernaum Jesus turned aside, with 
three of his disciples, and climbed the 



58 The Scriptures 

mountain where he was transfigured 
before them. In this scene he is 
significantly presented in converse with 
Moses and Elijah, representatives of 
the law and the prophets. Thus the 
written and the incarnate Word stood 
face to face. Moses, looking backward 
over the lapse of fifteen hundred years, 
knew now the real significance of all 
that he had been divinely moved to write 
in the ceremonial law ; and Elijah, also 
looking back, through a vista of nine 
hundred years, perceived the fulfillment 
of prophecy in Christ. And to empha- 
size this fulfillment of the written Word 
in its living complement, a Voice from 
heaven was heard, saying, "This is my 
beloved Son, hear ye him ! " 

It is further recorded that, as Christ 
and the three disciples were coming 
down out of the mountain, they asked 
him, " Why say the scribes that Elijah 
must first come ?" His answer is in di- 
rect contravention of those who allow 



Actual Attitude 59 

that any Scripture can come to naught ; 
" And he said unto them, Elijah indeed 
cometh first, and restoreth all things : 
and how is it written of the Son of man, 
that he should suffer many things and be 
set at nought ? But I say unto you, that 
Elijah is come, and they have also done 
unto him whatsoever they would, even as 
it is written" (Mark ix. 12, 13 ; cf. Matt, 
xvii. 10-13). The word " verily " is used 
in the teaching of Jesus to emphasize 
only the most important truths. And in 
showing these disciples " how it is writ- 
ten " it is evident that again he " opened 
unto them the Scriptures " with refer- 
ence to his sufferings as the Son of man. 
Thus the Book is ever open before him. 
On reaching Jerusalem the Master 
went up to the temple and began to teach. 
So wonderful were his words that " the 
Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this 
man letters, having never learned ? " Let 
it be remembered that the education of 
the Jews from childhood up was in the 



60 The Scriptures 

Bible and in such literature only as bore 
more or less directly upon it. So that 
when they spoke of Christ's acquaintance 
with " letters " they referred to his fa- 
miliarity with the Scriptures and their 
interpretation. The profound grasp of 
the Scriptures exhibited by a peasant, a 
mere carpenter, this was what amazed 
them. His answer was, " My teaching is 
not mine but his that sent me " (John vii. 
15-18) and, that his reference was dis- 
tinctly to the teaching of the Scriptures 
is clear from what follows : " Did not 
Moses give you the law ; and yet none of 
you keepeth it ; " and he proceeded to 
give a specific illustration of their depart- 
ure from the clear meaning of the Word 
(John vii. 19-24). 

On the last day of the feast, during 
the imposing ceremonies known as " the 
Effusion of Waters," Jesus stood and 
cried, "If any man thirst, let him come 
unto me and drink. He that believeth 
on me, as the Scripture hath said y from 



Actual Attitude 61 

within him shall flow rivers of living 
water !' (John vii. 37, 38). Here again 
we note the ever recurring, " // is writ- 
ten " which characterized the preaching 
of Christ. He did not take a text of 
Scripture as the headline of his discourse ; 
but his discourse was shot through and 
through with the Word of God. 

One morning, a little later, he went 
early into the Temple and taught the 
people who came thronging about him. 
He was interrupted presently by a mob, 
led by scribes and Pharisees, who, drag- 
ging a woman taken in adultery threw 
her on the pavement before him, saying, 
" Moses in the law commanded that such 
should be stoned ; but what say est thou ? " 
They intimated that he had been giving 
them a surfeit of Moses' law ; let him 
take his own medicine. There was no 
shrinking on his part ; but what scorn ! 
What unutterable scorn in his silence ! 
a He stooped and wrote upon the 
ground. " Perhaps he merely read what 



62 The Scriptures 

he had written there, when, looking on 
the woman's accusers, he said " Let him 
that is without sin cast the first stone at 
her." Here was not a word, not a syllable, 
against the law, such as they had ex- 
pected, but the broadest, deepest, truest 
interpretation of it (John viii. 2-11). 

This incident led to a discourse on the 
relation of Jesus to the Father, and on 
the testimony of the Father to his Son- 
ship : "It is written in your law that the 
testimony of two witnesses is true. I am 
one that bear witness of myself ; and the 
Father that sent me beareth witness of 
me." The reference here is to the Scrip- 
tures ; it cannot be otherwise. And the 
whole discourse on this occasion, as re- 
corded in John viii. is a far-reaching state- 
ment of the absolute accord of Jesus with 
the written Word, putting to confusion 
those who called themselves children 
of Abraham while refusing to obey 
Abraham's God and driving them to a 
very frenzy of hatred by his sublime 



Actual Attitude 63 

peroration " Before Abraham was, I 
am ! 

At the Feast of Dedication (Dec. 20), 
Jesus having made several itineraries in 
Perea and elsewhere, was again present 
in Jerusalem. As he was teaching in 
Solomon's Porch . the Jews renewed 
their attack on his Messianic credentials ; 
"Tell us plainly," they said, "if thou be 
the Christ." He told them plainly ; and 
they charged him with blasphemy, " be- 
cause thou, being a mail, makest thyself 
God." He again defended himself by 
falling back on the Scriptures, " Is it not 
written in your law, I said, Ye are gods ? 
If he called them gods, unto whom the 
word of God came {and the Scripture can- 
not be broken), say ye of him, whom the 
Father sanctified and sent into the world, 
Thou blasphemest ; because I said, I am 
the Son of God ? " (John x. 34-36). 

Being driven out of Jerusalem again 
by the malignity of his enemies, he 
took refuge in a city called Ephraim ; 



64 The Scriptures 

where he remained until the cross 
beckoned him. The time of the fourth 
Passover was drawing near when he set 
out for the Holy City. It is a singular 
fact, that in sending out his disciples to 
preach in the villages along the way, 
not a word occurs in their commission 
to indicate specifically what they were 
to preach. It is left for us to assume 
that they were to follow the example 
of their Leader in pointing out his 
Messianic office and work, as a fulfill- 
ment of the law and the prophets ; that 
is, they were to preach the written Word 
as setting forth the incarnate Word. 
And that this was their mode of proce- 
dure seems clear from the words of Jesus 
on their return, " Blessed are the eyes 
which see the things which ye see ; for 
I say unto you, that many prophets and 
kings desired to see the things which ye 
see, and saw them not ; and to hear the 
things which ye hear, and heard them 
not " (Luke x. 23, 24). 



Actual Attitude 65 

It was somewhere on this journey that 
a certain lawyer (i. e. theologian) stood 
up and tested him saying, " Master, what 
shall I do to inherit eternal life ? Now 
mark his answer, " What is written in the 
Law ? How reddest thou ? ' (Luke x. 
25-28). Would that all his ministers were 
as faithful as Christ himself in referring 
sinners, learned or otherwise, to the 
Scriptures as the oracles of life ! 

In his preaching at this time he was 
most unsparing in his denunciation of the 
scribes or " lawyers. " There was good 
and sufficient reason for this in their in- 
efficiency and malfeasance as interpreters 
of the divine law. This was their special 
and particular function ; to open the 
Scriptures to the people. They were the 
" Biblical experts " of that time. But 
how wretchedly they botched their 
work ! On the one hand they empha- 
sized the minor requirements of Scripture 
to the neglect of truth and righteous- 
ness ; and on the other they added super- 

E 



66 The Scriptures 

erogatory precepts of their own ; the re- 
sult being that their version of the 
Scriptures bore about the same relation 
to the original as the " Polychrome 
Bible " does in these days. Wherefore 
the Lord denounced them, saying "Woe 
unto you, lawyers (that is, instructors in 
Biblical literature,) for ye have taken away 
the key of knowledge ! Ye entered not in 
yourselves, and them that were entering 
in ye hindered " (Luke xi. 45, 52). The 
"key of knowledge' ' here referred to 
was the doctrine of Messiah, his incarna- 
tion, atonement and triumph over death 
in behalf of all believers ; a doctrine 
which opens the true meaning of the 
Scriptures, and without which they are 
as meaningless as an indecipherable 
hieroglyph. This doctrine was rejected 
by those who were specially appointed 
to use it for the enlightening of the 
people, wherefore the Lord's " Woe 
unto you." The close application of 
his words on this occasion to certain par- 



Actual Attitude 67 

ticipants in current Biblical controversy 
affords a .striking illustration of the ad- 
justment of Christ's teaching to the prog- 
ress of the centuries and to the needs 
of every age. 

The religious leaders, particularly the 
Pharisees or orthodox party, were so in- 
furiated by his teaching and so carried 
away with envy by reason of his hold 
upon the people * that they openly ridi- 
culed him ; whereupon he rebuked them 
on this wise, " Ye are they that justify 
yourselves in the sight of men ; but God 
knoweth your hearts : for that which is 
exalted among men is an abomination 
in the sight of God ,: (Luke xvi. 15). 
And continuing he said, " The law and 
the prophets (that is, the Scriptures) were 
until John; from that time the gospel 
of the kingdom of God is preached, and 
every man entereth violently into it. But 
it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, 

* Being "covetous " (<pi\&pyvpoi) they " derided him " (Luke 
xvi. 14). 



68 The Scriptures 

than for one tittle of the law to fall M 
(Luke xvi. 16,^ 17). " By the law and the 
prophets" he meant the Scriptures (as 
we shall see further on) and by saying 
that they "were until John " he could 
only mean that they had been divinely 
intended as a trustworthy guide in all 
things looking forward and leading up 
to the gospel dispensation. In so far as 
they were prophetic or symbolical they 
were proven true by their perfect fulfill- 
ment in that dispensation as " the king- 
dom of God." 

Then followed the parable of Dives 
and Lazarus, in which the Master laid a 
still clearer and deeper emphasis on the 
importance and saving power of the 
Scriptures. For when Dives requested, 
in behalf of his five brethren, that one 
might be sent from the world of spirits 
to warn them of the terrible doom of a 
sinful life, the answer was " If they hear 
not Moses and the prophets, neither will 
they be persuaded though one rose from 



Actual Attitude 69 

the dead" (Luke xvi. 31). The only 
possible meaning of these words is that 
Moses and the prophets (that is, the 
Scriptures, as we shall see presently,) 
were a sufficient and trustworthy guide 
to salvation, and that God, in giving the 
Scriptures, had done the utmost possible 
to lead men to eternal life. 

The attempt of the Pharisees to en- 
tangle him in the question of divorce led 
to a further statement of his unswerving 
loyalty to the written Word. " Is it law- 
ful," they asked, " for a man to put away 
his wife for every cause ? " to which he 
replied, " What did Moses command 
you ? " And when they betook them- 
selves evasively to a temporary provision 
made for Israel " because of the hardness 
of their hearts " — an exception which 
merely served to confirm the rule — he 
drove them relentlessly back to the sanc- 
tity of the marriage law, ''Have ye not 
read, that he who made them from the 
beginning made them male and female, 



7<3 The Scriptures 

and said, For this cause shall a man leave 
his father and. mother, and shall cleave 
to his wife ; and the two shall become 
one flesh ? So that they are no more two, 
but one flesh. What therefore God hath 
joined together, let not man put asunder " 
(Matt. xix. 4-6). In this, as in all his 
other teaching, he showed his faith in 
Scripture as the infallible rule of faith 
and practice for all people, under all cir- 
cumstances and in every age. 

As he journeyed among the villages a 
certain ruler came running and prostrated 
himself before him, asking " Good Mas- 
ter, what shall I do that I may inherit 
eternal life?" His answer, "keep the 
commandments" shows again, his constant 
and consistent advocacy of the Scriptures. 
In his further counsel to this ruler he de- 
velops the fact, brought out afterwards 
in doctrinal form by Paul, that " the law 
is a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ ; " 
and, inferentially, that a man who rejects 
the authority of the law as contained in the 



Actual Attitude 71 

Old Testament is not likely to be greatly 
helped by the gospel in his search for 
eternal life. 

VI Passion Week 

On Palm Sunday, April 2, 30 A. D., 
the Lord returned to Jerusalem from 
his last itinerary, fulfilling in every inci- 
dent of his triumphal entry the prophecies 
which had been uttered concerning him. 
On presenting himself in the temple, 
where the lingering echoes of the popular 
adulations followed him, he was rebuked 
by the high priests and scribes for per- 
mitting the Hosannas of the children. 
Again he referred them to the Scrip- 
tures, saying " Yea, did ye never read, 
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings 
thou hast perfected praise ?" (Matt. 
xxi. 16). 

And when certain Greeks came say- 
ing, " We would see Jesus," he, seeing 
in them the vanguard of the mighty 
army of the redeemed who were to be 



72 The Scriptures 

given him as the fruit of the travail of 
his soul, spoke, of his vicarious death, 
concluding " And I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto 
myself." This provoked the reply, 
" We have heard out of the law that the 
Christ abideth forever ; and how sayest 
thou, ' The Son of man must be lifted up ? ' 
Who is this Son of man ? '' To which 
he answered, "Yet a little while is the 
light among you. Walk while ye have 
the light, that darkness overtake you 
not ; and he that walketh in the darkness 
knoweth not whither he goeth. While 
ye have the light, believe on the light, 
that ye may become sons of light" 
(John xii. 35, 36). We are thus informed 
(a) that " Son of man " was regarded as 
a Messianic title, (b) that Jesus appropri- 
ated this title to himself, (c) that being 
" lifted up " was understood as referring 
to death by crucifixion, (d) that Christ 
by his vicarious death on the cross was 
to become the Saviour of all who should 



Actual Attitude 73 

be drawn to believe in him, and (e) that 
all this is taught in the Old Testament. 
For Jesus and his controversial opponents 
were alike, on this occasion, speaking 
within the circumscription of the law. 

In the second cleansing of the temple, 
which occurred at this time, our Lord 
justified his apparently high-handed pro- 
cedure by saying "It is written, My 
house shall be called a house of prayer : 
but ye make it a den of robbers " (Matt. 
xxi. 13). 

In further defense of his Messianic 
authority he uttered the parable of the 
Wicked Husbandmen who rejected the 
messengers sent them by the owner of 
the vineyard and, finally, slew his beloved 
son. The application was perfectly 
clear ; and it was clinched with the 
words, " Did ye never read in the Scriptures, 
The stone which the builders rejected, 
the same was made the head of the 
corner ; this was from the Lord, and it is 
marvelous in our eyes ? " (Matt. xxi. 42). 



74 The Scriptures 

The religious leaders, infuriated by 
this sort of teaching and all the more be- 
cause it was impregnably fortified by 
their own Scriptures, endeavored to en- 
snare him in his words. One of the 
Sadducees propounded the thumb-worn 
question of the sevenfold widow : 
"Teacher, Moses wrote unto us, If a 
man's brother die, and leave a wife be- 
hind him, and leave no child, that his 
brother should take his wife, and raise 
up seed unto his brother. There were 
seven brethren : and the first took a wife, 
and dying left no seed ; and the second 
took her, and died, leaving no seed be- 
hind him ; and the third likewise : and 
the seven left no seed. Last of all the 
woman also died. In the resurrection 
whose wife shall she be of them ? for the 
seven had her to wife " (Mark. xii. 19- 
23). The answer of Jesus was a distinct 
challenge of their method of expounding 
the Word, which must have been doubly 
galling to those whose profession was 



Actual Attitude 75 

that of Biblical experts, "Is it not for 
this cause that ye err, that ye know not the 
Scriptures, nor the power of God ? For 
when they shall rise from the dead, they 
neither marry, nor are given in marriage ; 
but are as angels in heaven. But as 
touching the dead, that they are raised ; 
have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the 
place concerning the Bush, How God 
spake unto him saying, I am the God of 
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the 
God of Jacob ? He is not the God of 
the dead, but of the living : ye do greatly 
err" (Mark xii. 24-27). This is ideal 
Biblical exposition, an example for all 
who, like Jesus, believe in the Scriptures 
and aim to arrive at their real meaning. 

The next question was by one of the 
Pharisees, who is mentioned also as "a 
scribe" and "a lawyer." They were 
evidently putting forth their best man to 
measure swords with Jesus in expound- 
ing the Law. "What is the first com- 
mandment of all ? " he asked ; and Jesus, 



76 The Scriptures 

in his answer, gave that wonderful sum- 
mary which the world has ever since re- 
ceived as its best and briefest compendium 
of ethics : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind. This is the 
great and first commandment. And a 
second like unto it is this, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these 
two commandments the whole law hangeth, 
and the prophets" (Matt. xxii. 37-40). 

The method of Jesus in approaching 
the Scriptures is further illustrated in a 
later conference with the Pharisees : He 
asked them, saying, " What think ye of 
Christ? whose son is he? They say 
unto him, The son of David. He saith 
unto them, How then doth David in the 
Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord 
said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right 
hand, till I put thine enemies underneath 
thy feet? If David then calleth him 
Lord, how is he his son ? And no one 
was able to answer him a word, neither 



Actual Attitude 77 

durst any man from that day forth ask 
him any more questions" (Matt. xxii. 
42-46). Observe, Jesus asked the ques- 
tion, but did not elucidate it. Having 
given them food for reflection, he left 
them to digest it at their leisure. It may 
be worth our while to inquire how the 
destructive critics of our own time would 
answer it. (a) Some would evade the 
difficulty by denying that the one hundred 
and tenth Psalm is Davidic. What mat- 
ters it that this Psalm, which is more fre- 
quently quoted by Christ and his apostles 
than any other portion of the Old Testa- 
ment, is invariably ascribed to David? 
They deny it. What matters it that Jesus 
affirmed without if or peradventure that 
David was its author? They deny it. 
What matters it that the testimony of the 
Christian Church through all the centu- 
ries, as formulated in its creeds and confes- 
sions, is to the same purport ? They deny 
it. (6) Others would answer by disput- 
ing the Messianic character of the Psalm. 



78 The Scriptures 

If forced to admit that David was the 
author, they still insist that his reference 
was to one of his own princely sons. 
But which of them could meet the 
manifesto ? Absalom, the scapegrace, or 
Solomon, the wise fool ? Was there ever 
one of David's immediate or remoter 
lineage who became a priest, and a per- 
petual priest ? Was ever one enthroned 
at Jehovah's right hand, the place of 
equality with him ? Did ever one rally 
an army like the dewdrops of morning 
and go forth to universal conquest ? Nay ; 
surely the meaning lies deeper. The 
question is not answered yet. (c) Others, 
still, if forced to admit the Davidic and 
Messianic character of the Psalm, will 
deny its reference to Jesus. Neverthe- 
less they profess to believe in him who 
said, as plainly as words could express it, 
" I am that One ! " It was of precisely 
such men, the religious leaders of his time 
who professed to believe in the Messiah 
and to be looking for him, that he said 



Actual Attitude 79 

in words as scathingly denunciatory as they 
were pathetically tender, " Ye search the 
Scriptures, because ye think that in them 
ye have eternal life ; and these are they 
which bear witness of me ; and ye will 
not come unto me, that ye may have life ! " 
Blind, blind under the noonday sun ! 

On Tuesday of Passion Week our Lord 
delivered his last public discourses. They 
were largely prophetic, relating to the 
overthrow of Jerusalem, the end of the 
world, the second advent and the judg- 
ment. In predicting these things he de- 
clares that he is reaffirming the prophe- 
cies of Holy Writ ; " that all things which 
are written may be fulfilled" (Luke xxi. 
22). He speaks of "until the times of 
the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke xxi. 
24), and of the abomination of desola- 
tion which was spoken of through Daniel 
the prophet, standing in the holy place " 
(Matt. xxiv. 15) and of Noah, " For as in 

* This reference is worthy of note in view of the discredit 
put upon the prophet Daniel in these days. 



8o The Scriptures 

those days which were before the flood 
they were eating and drinking, marrying 
and giving in marriage, until the day that 
Noah entered into the ark, and they knew 
not until the flood came, and took them 
all away ; so shall be the coming of the 
Son of man " (Matt. xxiv. 38, 39). 

As Jesus sat at the Pascal supper with 
his disciples in the upper room, he spoke 
of the approaching betrayal as a fulfill- 
ment of the Scripture, " He that eateth 
my bread lifted up his heel against me " 
(John xiii. 18 ; cf. Ps. xli. 9) ; of his aban- 
donment by the disciples in like manner, 
" All ye shall be offended in me this 
night : for // is written, I will smite the 
shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall 
be scattered abroad " (Matt. xxvi. 31 ; cf. 
Zech. xiii. 7) ; also of the persecution of 
his enemies, " that the word may be ful- 
filled that is written in their law, They 
hated me without a cause (John xv. 25 ; 
cf. Psalm xxxv. 19) ; of himself as going 
" even as it is written " (Matt. xxvi. 24), 



Actual Attitude 81 

and still more explicitly, " This which is 
written must be fulfilled in me> And he was 
reckoned with transgressors ; for that 
which concerneth me hath fulfillment" 
(Luke xxii. 37). 

In his sacredotal prayer on the same 
occasion, he associates himself with the 
written Word on this wise, " I manifested 
thy name unto the men whom thou 
gavest me out of the world : thine they 
were, and thou gavest them to me ; 
and they have kept thy Word. Now they 
know that all things whatsoever thou 
hast given me are from thee : for the 
words which thou gavest me I have 
given unto them ; and they received 
them, and knew of a truth that I came 
forth from thee, and they believed that 
thou didst send me " (John xvii. 6-8). 
And again he says, " I have given them thy 
Word" (verse 14), and again, as if to leave 
no doubt as to his meaning, " Sanctify them 
in the truth, thy Word is truth " (verse 17). 

The same night, in Gethsemane, he 



82 The Scriptures 

yielded himself to the eternal purpose, as 
marked out in the Scriptures, when he 
drank the purple cup of agony, saying 
" Father, not my will, but thine, be 
done ! " (Luke xxii. 42). 

As the band of soldiers approached to 
seize him, Peter drew his sword, where- 
upon Jesus said, " Put up again thy sword 
into its place. Thinkest thou that I can- 
not beseech my Father, and he shall 
even now send me more than twelve 
legions of angels ? How then should the 
Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must 
be?" (Matt. xxvi. 52-54). And to the 
soldiers he said, "Are ye come out as 
against a robber with swords and staves 
to seize me ? I was daily with you in 
the temple teaching, and ye took me not : 
but this is done that the Scriptures might 
be fulfilled " (Mark xiv. 48, 49). Fulfilled ! 
Fulfilled ! How constantly he recurs to 
this fulfillment of the Word ! 

On trial before the Sanhedrin his Mes- 
sianic claim was challenged again, "If 



Actual Attitude 83 

thou art the Christ, tell us." But why 
should he reiterate it? For three years 
he had done nothing but open unto them 
their Scriptures in proof of his Messiah- 
ship ; nevertheless he answers, and there 
is no misunderstanding him, " If I tell 
you, ye will not believe ; and if I ask 
you, ye will not answer. But from 
henceforth shall the Son of man be 
seated at the right hand of the power of 
God. And they all said, Art thou then 
the Son of God ? And he said unto them, 
Ye say that I am. And they said, What 
further need have we of witnesses ? for 
we ourselves have heard from his own 
mouth " (Luke xxii. 67-71). He was 
next haled before Pilate, who asked him 
"Art thou a King, then?" This ques- 
tion was of precisely the same purport as 
the preceding, since the Messiah was 
known as " King of the Jews." And 
Jesus answered, "Thou sayest that I am 
a king. To this end have I been born, 
and to this end am I come into the 



84 The Scriptures 

world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth. Every one that is of the truth 
heareth my voice " (John xviii. 37). In all 
these affirmations, Jesus represents him- 
self as a witness bearing testimony to the 
truth and to the truth as contained in the 
law and the prophets, that is, in the Word 
of God. 

On the cross, where every incident 
was linked with prophecy, having 
reached the fearful climax of his anguish 
in the hiding of the Father's face, his 
breaking heart found utterance in words 
of Messianic import, " Eloi, Eloi, lama 
sabachthani! " (Psalm xxii. 1) ; and when 
the last moment was reached he uttered 
"with a loud voice" — like a soldier, 
wounded unto death, but waving his 
standard on the conquered ramparts — 
a single word, one word in which all 
prophecy is gathered into glorious ful- 
fillment, TeTeXeo-Tail "It is finished!' 
The red path from the protevangel in 
Eden to Golgotha has been traversed ; 



Actual Attitude 85 

and all the blood of all the sacrifices finds 
its antitype in him. " Behold the Lamb 
of God-! " 

Is it possible for any one to pursue the 
foregoing record and not perceive that 
Jesus, by word and example, was com- 
mitted to the truth of the Scripture ? He 
lived in it, stood for it, died in vindica- 
tion of it. If, however, there should be 
any lingering shadow of doubt concern- 
ing his attitude, it must surely vanish 
when we hear him on the way to Em- 
maus. It is after his resurrection. He 
has fallen in with Cleopas and a comrade 
whose eyes are holden so that they do 
not know him. They are lost in melan- 
choly on account of his death. He hears 
their sorrowful tale and then says, "O 
foolish men, and slow of heart to believe 
in all that the prophets have spoken ! Be- 
hooved it not the Christ to suffer these 
things, and to enter into his glory ? ' 
(Luke xxiv. 25, 26) ; and then " begin- 



86 The Scriptures 

ning from Moses and from all the prophets, 
he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures 
the things concerning himself." Wonder- 
ful teacher ! What mastery of the 
Scriptures was his ! What insight into 
its vast meaning ! There was no need 
that he should unbind a scroll ; the or- 
acles were in his memory and at his 
finger tips. O teachers of men, here is 
One that can teach all ! The Word, 
hidden in his heart, flows with the full 
freeness of a fountain from his. lips. 
Blessed are all they that hear him. Aye, 
their hearts burn within them while he 
opens to them the Scriptures by the 
way. 



CHAPTER III 

The Specific Teaching of Jesus Con- 
cerning the Scriptures. 

/T may seem a superserviceable task to 
pursue the question further ; since 
the foregoing survey of the life and 
teachings of Jesus makes it perfectly 
clear that he believed in the Scriptures 
without an if or peradventure. But there 
are some further considerations which 
will "make assurance doubly sure." 

/. Our Lord's use of Current Versions 

At the outset, we give attention to a 
fact which is frequently employed to 

87 



88 The Scriptures 

show that Jesus did not believe in so- 
called " verbal inspiration ; " namely, his 
custom of using the Septuagint and other 
current versions of the Scriptures. 

A precise statement of the case is as 
follows : (1) In some of his quotations 
he closely followed the Hebrew.* (2) 
In others he appears to have quoted 
from a lost Aramaic version. (3) In 
others still, and most frequently, he fol- 
lowed the Septuagint, a Greek transla- 
tion of the Hebrew Scriptures made be- 
tween two and three centuries before his 
time by a body of learned Alexandrian 
Jews. This was the Bible in common 
use. 

The first conclusion drawn from this 
method of Jesus is that he did not regard 
any of the current versions of the Scripture 

* The language which our Lord commonly spoke was 
Aramaic ; and at that period Hebrew was completely a dead 
language, known only to the more educated, and only to be 
acquired by labor : yet it is clear that Jesus was acquainted 
with it, for some of his Scriptural quotations directly refer to 
the Hebrew original. Farrar's M life of Christ." 



Specific Teaching 89 

as absolutely true to the original. Not one 
of them was in fact free from error. 
To say that these errors were such as 
would naturally occur in a transcript 
made by uninspired men, or that they 
were of such a minute character as not 
to affect any of the important truths 
or precepts of the original — both of 
which statements are quite correct — is 
not germane to the question now in 
hand. The errors were there. 

And the same is true of the many 
versions in use throughout the world in 
our time. In the King James, the Ox- 
ford, the Douay, and all other versions 
in the English and other tongues, there 
are errors such as would seem to be in- 
evitable in translations and transcriptions 
made by fallible men. This is never 
denied ; it would be folly to deny it.* 

The second conclusion from the fact re- 
ferred to, is that this imperfection in the 
current Scriptures of his time did not pre- 

* See Appendix C 



go The Scriptures 

vent Jesus from placing his cordial confi- 
dence in them. This was partly due to 
the fact that he knew the insignificant 
character of those errors; which must 
have been infinitesimal indeed to his 
mind, since he nowhere made the 
slightest allusion to them ; his attitude in 
this particular furnishing a striking con- 
trast to that of certain critics of our time 
who make it an important part of their 
business to multiply and magnify them. 
When one pauses to reflect, it is indeed 
an occasion of immeasurable wonder that 
the Scriptures have been transmitted 
through so many centuries, transcribed 
by so many hands, and translated into so 
many tongues with so few traces of even 
the slightest departure from the original. 
The marvelous thing is not that there 
should be errors in each of these many 
versions ; but that, on the one hand, 
those errors should be, as they confess- 
edly are, so very slight ; and, on the 
other, that all the versions should be, 



Specific Teaching 91 

as they are, in substantial accord with 
each other. This seems clearly to in- 
dicate the supervision and control of a 
special providence in the perpetuation 
of this singular Book. 

But there is a third conclusion which 
must be drawn logically from Jesus' use 
of the Septuagint and other imperfect 
versions ; namely, that the real foundation 
of his confidence was the absolute truth of the 
original. One of the destructive critics 
says, " We cannot avoid the question, 
Did Christ and his apostles, who chose to 
draw their quotations from the Septua- 
gint version rather than from the He- 
brew, believe in what some moderns are 
insisting on, namely, the verbal inspira- 
tion of the Old Testament ? If they did, 
their ignorance of the Hebrew verbiage 
{sic) is simply amazing ! " * Did it not 
occur to this writer that if Jesus had 
quoted " from the Hebrew " it could not 

* " The Septuagint and Old Testament Quotations in the 
New Testament." Homiletic Review XXIV. 14. 



92 The Scriptures 

have been from the original manuscripts 
but only from current copies of them ? 
And when he speaks of the insistence of 
" certain moderns " on the verbal inspira- 
tion of the Old" Testament, he surely 
cannot mean that anybody, ancient or 
modern, has claimed inerrancy for any 
current copies or versions whatsoever, in 
Hebrew, in English or in any other 
tongue ; for that is not so. The claim 
of absolute inerrancy is made only and 
always for the original autographs of 
the Scriptures. 

Ah, those " original autographs ! ' 
There are not a few among the contro- 
versialists of these days who deride the 
mere mention of them. Nevertheless, 
here is the very pivot of the argument; 
and there is much in the teaching and 
example of Jesus which leads us to 
believe that he himself so regarded 
it. 

In this connection let it be observed 
first that the original autograph is a his- 



Specific Teaching 93 

toric fact. No one will question the 
statement that every portion of Scripture 
once existed precisely as it left the hands 
of those writers who " spoke as they 
were moved by the Spirit of God." 

Second, every portion of Scripture in that 
original form must have been precisely true, 
to the last jot and tittle. Else there is no 
value in the "moving of the Spirit/' and 
" inspiration' ' is an inane and meaning- 
less word. God " breathed " the orig- 
inal Scriptures through " holy men ; " 
and when he had thus breathed upon the 
parchment, the deposit left there must 
have been absolutely true ; since God 
never breathed a lie. 

Third, this is the "traditional" view of 
the truth of Scripture. The universal 
church has held it through the ages. 
The Jews, at the time of the advent, no 
more believed in the absolute correctness 
of current versions than we do nowadays : 
but they did believe unwaveringly in the 
perfect truth of the Scriptures in their 



94 The Scriptures 

original form.* And had not Jesus shared 
in that opinion he would surely, as an 
honest teacher, have made some protest 
against or dissent from it.f 

* " One thing at any rate was quite certain. The Old Tes- 
tament, leastwise, the law of Moses, was directly and wholly 
from God ; and if so, then its form also — its letter — must be 
authentic and authoritative. Thus much on the surface, and 
for all. * * * Christ was in sympathy with all the highest 
tendencies of his people and time. Above all, there was his 
intimate converse with the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
If, in the synagogue, he saw much to show the hollowness, 
self-seeking, pride, and literalism w T hich a mere external ob- 
servance of the law T fostered, he would ever turn from w T hat 
man or devils said to w T hat he read, to what was ' written.' 
Not one dot or hook of it could fall to the ground — all must 
be established and fulfilled. The law of Moses in all its 
bearings, the utterances of the prophets — Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Micah, Zechariah, Malachi— and the 
hopes and consolations of the Psalms, were all to him literally 
true, and cast their light upon the building which Moses had 
reared. It was all one ; a grand unity ; not an aggregation 
of different parts, but the unfolding of a living organism. 
Chief est of all, it was the thought of the Messianic bearing of 
all Scripture in its unity, the idea of the kingdom of God and 
the King of Zion, which was the light and life of all." Eder- 
sheim's " Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah." 

t We pause just here to note a singular parallel between 
Christ and the Scriptures : (i) They are both alike called The 
Word of God. (2) They are both theanthropic ; that is, the 
Divine and human are inextricably blended in their fabric ; 



Specific Teaching 95 

Fourth : The attitude of Jesus was not 
that of a Biblical critic, for obvious reasons : 
(1) He showed his general accord with 
the ultimate purpose of the textual or 
" lower criticism/' in the emphasis which 
he placed upon the authority of the 
Scriptures in their original form. Not 
once or twice but again and again he pro- 
tested against the giving of co-ordinate 
authority to the " tradition of the elders." 
This could only be because he believed 
that the Scriptures, as thus originally 
given, were an absolutely faithful and 
correct presentation of the truth which 
God desired to reveal to men. 

yet not so as to prevent their absolute truth and faultlessness. 
(3) Both originals have vanished from sight ; and are trans- 
mitted through succeeding ages only through the lives and 
labors of fallible men. Nevertheless, we believe in the unseen 
Christ and thus believing " rejoice with joy unspeakable and 
full of glory." And for a like reason we believe in the Orig- 
inal Autograph of the Scriptures as it left the pens of those 
holy men who wrote as they were moved by the Spirit of 
God. (4) Despite all errors in the transmission of the two 
Words, written and incarnate, they are alike in such sub- 
stantial perfection as to be " profitable unto every good work," 
and wholly effective in guiding and saving men. 



96 The Scriptures 

And just here we note a singular dif- 
ferentiation between the Bible and all 
other literature: The u latest edition " 
of other books is the best. The text 
books used in our schools of learning 
must be " revised " from time to time in 
order to keep them abreast of the age. 
But the best edition of the Bible is its 
first one. The effort on all sides is not 
to revise it but to restore it to its original 
form. This can only mean that the 
Bible in that original was divinely ad- 
justed to the progress of the ages. All 
its scientific propositions,* its prophecies,f 

* " The order of creation, as thus stated in Genesis, is 
faultless in the light of modern science." Sir J. W. Dawson. 

t Macaulay once ventured into the realms of prediction, 
when he intimated that perhaps, in the remote future, some 
traveler from New Zealand might, in the mist of a vast soli- 
tude, " take his stand on a broken arch of the London bridge 
to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." His words represent the 
very summit of improbability ; yet there are a thousand proph- 
ecies in Scripture equally improbable, uttered at times when 
the world-powers were in their glory ; and not one of them 
has gone by default. Tyre, Sidon, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria ; 
they have turned out precisely as the ancient prophets said 
they would do. The graves of nations line the path of his- 



Specific Teaching 97 

its laws and jurisprudence,* its theological 
statements, f and its plan of salvation,! 
were recorded with a definite view to the 
vicissitudes of time. And the fact that 

tory ; and from their solitary ruins the owl and bittern, the fox 
and jackal bear testimony to the exact truth or the Word of 
God. 

* It is sometimes affirmed, as an objection to the Scriptures, 
that there are portions which cannot be read aloud. It is 
true ; but this is an argument in their favor ; since they were 
not written to be read aloud but to regulate all human life. 
There are things occurring in every Civil Court which cannot 
be proclaimed on the housetops. There are surgical opera- 
tions in every hospital, necessary and helpful, which it would 
not be well to perform before the public eyes. The Bible is 
intended to be a perfect system of moral pathology and thera- 
peutics. It anticipates all public crimes and private vices, and 
deals heroically with them. 

t All the discoveries of philosophy have not produced a 
single additional truth ; they have merely thrown new light 
upon the teachings of the Book. Every doctrine which has 
been advanced, from time to time, in opposition to this teach- 
ing, has been pronounced a heresy and inevitably demon- 
strated to be false by the stern logic of events. No New 
Theology has thus far been able to vindicate itself ; its only 
hope of vindication, in the clear light of history, being in its 
final adjustment to the doctrinal system of the Scriptures. 

\ There are other sacred books and other religions which 
offer us religious doctrines and ethical codes ; but there is 
none that answers this question : " What shall a man do to be 
delivered from the record of a sinful past ? " 

G 



98 The Scriptures 

none of them has been reversed or even 
amended in the progress of the centuries 
can only be explained by reference to 
their divine origin. 

In 1881 a company of archaeologists 
under the leadership of Herr Brugsch, 
while excavating near the ancient city of 
Thebes, unearthed a burying-place called 
"The Gate of the Kings," from which 
they took thirty-six mummies of royal 
personages of the eighteenth dynasty, 
that is, a period prior to 1000 B. C. 
Among them was Rameses II, or Sesos- 
tris, the Pharaoh of the captivity. By 
the side of these royal mummies were 
found hampers of food, provided for their 
use at the resurrection. A strange 
awakening this ! The shriveled bodies 
of the dead were carried forth on the 
shoulders of Arabs into the light of the 
Nineteenth Century of the Christian 
Era ! They were wrapped in strips of 
byssus, which were inscribed with caba- 
listic sentences from the " Book of the 



Specific Teaching 99 

Dead," the Scriptures of ancient Egypt. 
How superannuated this book ! How 
far behind the progress of events these 
worthies of long ago ! 

But suppose that, from among that 
imposing company of mummied worth- 
ies, a princess had calmly risen with all 
the ancient dignity of her high station, 
light in her eyes and unabated strength 
in her limbs, and had unfolded a scroll, 
written in our current speech, covering 
all the progress of the intervening cen- 
turies and fully abreast of the spirit of 
this age, would not that have been 
counted an extraordinary thing ? 

Yet this is indeed a veritable fact. Our 
Religion is as old as the Pharaohs and as 
fresh as this morning's dew. In the 
ancient personification of Wisdom it 
speaks on this wise : "I was set up from 
everlasting, from the beginning* before 
the world was " (Prov. viii. 23). 

(2) But in so far as the " lower criticism " 
works toward its desired end by a com- 

LofC. 



ioo The Scriptures 

parison of diverse copies and variant read- 
ings of Scripture — however essential this 
may be now as the method of arriv- 
ing at the original text — it is easy to un- 
derstand why Jesus, in his capacity as a 
religious teacher, did not employ it. 

(3) The same remark may be made 
with reference to the relation of Christ 
toward the "higher criticism." This 
method is defined by Professor Zenos as 
" The discovery and verification of the 
facts regarding the origin, form and value 
of literary productions upon the basis of 
their internal characteristics. " It is called, 
also, "literary criticism," and " historical 
criticism ; " and as such its value is beyond 
all question or peradventure. The so- 
called " Introductions to the Scriptures " 
are largely based upon it.* It is scarcely 

* " The word ' higher ' is here a technical term, used for the 
convenience' sake over against the technical term 'lower,' to dis- 
tinguish this literary criticism from another and still more ex- 
ternal kind of criticism — viz., that which is occupied with de- 
termining the exact original text of Scripture. The lower crit- 
icism is textual criticism ; literary criticism, is higher criticism 



Specific Teaching 101 

necessary to say, however, that a method 
so distinctly literary lay outside the prov- 
ince of Jesus' work. Therefore he did 
not use it. 

(4) It remains to add that the radical 
form of the " higher criticism," as repre- 
sented by those who insist that no true 
estimate can be formed of the Scriptures 
except by such as first dispossess them- 
selves of all conviction as to their divine 
origin and character, had no place in the 
precept or example of Jesus. Could he 
look at the Bible that way ? Could he 
regard it as mere "literature? 5 ' Not 
for a moment ! He believed in it as the 
one Book, standing solitary and alone, 

because it rises from the subordinate and subsidiary question 
as to the accuracy with which certain records have been 
transmitted to us, to the higher and broader question as to 
how these records came into existence at all." And again, 
" The higher criticism is literary criticism as distinguished 
from textual criticism, which is the ' lower.' It is not biblical 
philology, nor exegesis, nor biblical history, nor dogmatics, 
nor apologetics, although it has relations with all of these. 
It is the Science of the structure and history of the Biblical 
writings as works of human authorship." Professor Francis 
Brown, in Homiletic Review. Vol. xxiii. 295. 



io2 The Scriptures 

separated from all other literature what- 
soever by the fact that God breathed it. 

And those who follow Christ regard it 
in the same way. A Christian is neces- 
sarily " prejudiced " in favor of the Bible ; 
and by that fact he is disqualified from 
passing an " unbiassed " judgment upon it. 
He cannot dispossess himself, even for 
such high purposes as are claimed for 
the higher criticism, of his faith in the 
Scriptures as a singular book, separated 
from all other literature by the fact that 
it was " written by men who spoke from 
God, being moved by the Holy Ghost/' 
As well ask a loving and loyal son to give 
up his natural regard for his mother in 
order to qualify himself for service on a 
jury which has been empanelled to inves- 
tigate her personal purity. It is impos- 
sible ; it is unthinkable. 

This does not mean, however, that 
there is no place for the higher criticism, 
even in this narrower sense. There are 
plenty of scholarly people in the world 



Specific Teaching 103 

who have no prepossessions in favor of 
the truth of Scriptures ; nor is there dan- 
ger of ever having a dearth of such. And 
their work has a definite value, too. It 
reaches incidental conclusions, not infre- 
quently, which accord with the truest 
views of inspiration. But, so long as this 
work is being so industriously pursued 
with such results by outsiders, why should 
the followers of Christ be expected or 
inclined to disrobe themselves of their 
devotion to principle in. order to join the 
ranks of those who disavowing all relig- 
ious predilections, are thoroughly qualified 
to sit in purely secular judgment on the 
Word of God ? 

II. Titles applied to the Scriptures by Jesus 

We are living in a vortex of conflicting 
voices ; and Christ's throne of authority 
is just there, in the "eye of the storm. " 
He speaks to-day as he spoke to Job out 
of the midst of the whirlwind, and who 
are Bildad and Eliphaz and Zophar that 



104 The Scriptures 

they should darken counsel by words 
without knowledge ? Great scholars, no 
doubt; but, in our school, there is no 
expert but One. Are we asking a 
thousand questions about the Bible ? So 
long as we remain Christians, they are 
all reduced to this, What does Jesus say ? 

It is our purpose now to consider the 
terms used by him to designate the 
Scriptures. This is important as prepar- 
ing the way for his more positive and 
definite affirmations. 

The Book in the hand of Jesus was 
the " Old Testament " ; but at that time 
no such title was known. It was origi- 
nated by Paul in 2 Cor. iii. 14-15, A. V., 
and popularized by Jerome's use of 
Testamentum in the Vulgate. Our Lord, 
of course, makes no reference to it. 

(1) He calls the Bible the Word of God : 
this to begin with. Does he not qualify 
the phrase in any way? Never once. 
He says what he means and means 
what he says ; and when he refrains 



Specific Teaching 105 

from qualifying a statement it is obviously 
superserviceable for any of his disciples 
to supply the omission. His teaching, 
taken as a whole, must stand as he leaves it. 

In the Parable of the Sower, in which 
he sets forth the economy of his kingdom, 
he says, " The sower soweth the Word " 
(Mark iv. 14) : wherefore he calls it " the 
Word of the Kingdom ,J (Matt. xiii. 19), 

He prophesies the persecutions which 
shall arise from the preaching of the 
Word (Matt. xiii. 21 ; Markiv. 17) ; and 
pronounces a blessing on those who shall 
" hear the Word of God and keep it " 
(Luke xi. 28). 

In his denunciation of the Scribes and 
Pharisees on account of their false teach- 
ing he charges them with " making the 
Word of God of none effect by their 
traditions " (Mark vii. 13). 

He said to the Jews who sought to 
kill him, " Ye have not his Word abiding 
in you : for whom he sent, him ye be- 
lieve not" (John v. 38), a plain reference 



106 The Scriptures 

to the Messianic prophecies. And after- 
ward he said to those who took up stones 
to stone him, u Is it not written in your 
law, I said, Ye are gods ? If he called 
them gods, unto whom the Word of 
God came (and the Scripture cannot be 
broken) " etc. (John x. 25), thus making 
it quite clear that when he spoke of the 
Word of God he meant Scripture, or the 
written Word. 

On another occasion he said, " If I 
had not done among them the works 
which none other did, they had not had 
sin ; but now have they both seen and 
hated both me and my Father. But 
this cometh to pass, that the Word 
might be fulfilled that is written in their 
law, They hated me without a cause " 
(John xv. 24-25). 

In his sacerdotal prayer he uses the 
title thrice ; "I manifested thy name 
unto the men whom thou gavest me 
out of the world ; thine they were, 
and thou gavest them to me ; and 



Specific Teaching 107 

they have kept thy Word (John xvii. 
6). Again, " I have given them thy 
Word ; and the world hated them, be- 
cause they are not of the world, even 
as I am not of the world " (John xvii. 
14). And again, " Sanctify them in the 
truth; thy Word is truth" (John xvii. 
17). It is evident that here he does 
not refer to God's oral word, as spoken 
to individuals on occasion, but to his 
Word as recorded in the Scriptures. 
And, in this connection,, it is a fact worth 
mentioning that wherever this expression 
is used in the teaching of Jesus, it always 
appears to mean the written and not the 
oral Word. Not that this is a matter 
of supreme importance to the argument 
in hand ; for, were it otherwise, it would 
still remain that the word spoken to 
this or that patriarch or prophet, or to 
any particular age, would have been of 
merely temporary value had it not been 
transmitted in written form to succeed- 
ing generations. 



108 The Scriptures 

(2) Our Lord also refers to the Bible as 
Scripture or "Writings." The reason is 
obvious, and it would be more obvious 
to his immediate hearers than to us. 
For there was, at that time, a body 
of learned Jews, called scribes, whose 
special function was to copy or trans- 
cribe the Word of God. Dr. Schaff 
says of them, " Inasmuch as such a mi- 
nute acquaintance with the law, as their 
business implied, led them to become 
authorities upon the details of Mosaism, 
it came to pass that they were popularly 
regarded as the teachers of the law." In 
other words they were the " Biblical ex- 
perts " of their time. So while the term 
Scripture or " Writings " is ultimately 
traced to the fact that " Men spake from 
God being moved by the Holy Spirit," 
and wrote accordingly, the fact that it 
was the familiar title was due, probably, 
to the relation of these scribes to the 
copies of Scripture in common use. 

By the term "Scripture/' in the sin- 



Specific Teaching 109 

gular, he sometimes designates a particu- 
lar passage or portion of Holy Writ : as 
when, in the synagogue at Nazareth, 
opening the scroll of Isaiah at the lesson 
of the day (Isaiah lxi. 1-3), he said to the 
assembled worshipers, "This day is this 
Scripture fulfilled in your ears ' ' ( Luke iv. 
21). And again in' reproving the scribes 
for rejecting him, " Have ye not read 
even this Scripture : The stone which the 
builders rejected, the same was made the 
head of the corner ; this was from the 
Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes?" 
(Mark xii. 10 cf. Ps. cxviii. 22). And at 
supper in the upper room, in reference 
to the betrayer, " I know whom I have 
chosen : but that the Scripture may be 
fulfilled, He that eateth my bread lifted 
up his heel against me" (Johnxiii. 18 cf. 
Ps. xli. 9). 

At other times the singular is used to 
designate the general trend of various 
portions of Holy Writ : as when Jesus 
lifted up his voice on the last day of the 



no The Scriptures 

feast, during the ceremony known as the 
Effusion of Waters, and cried, " If any 
man thirst, let him come unto me and 
drink. He that believe th on me, as the 
Scripture hath said, from within him shall 
flow rivers of living water " (John vii. 38 ; 
cf. Is. xii. 3 ; Is. xliv. 3 ; Is. lv. 1 et al.). 
And again, in his sacerdotal prayer, "I 
kept them in thy name which thou hast 
given me : and not one of them perished, 
but the son of perdition ; that the Scrip- 
ture might be fulfilled " (John xvii. 12, 
where a general reference is made to all 
portions of Scripture touching upon the 
betrayer and his punishment). And still 
again where he reminds his enemies of 
their familiar proverb that "the Scripture 
cannot be broken " (John x. 35). 

The plural is generally used to desig- 
nate the Old Testament as a whole : as 
where he says, "Ye search the Scrip- 
tures ; because ye think that in them ye 
have eternal life and these are they which 
testify of me " (John v. 39). And again, 



Specific Teaching 1 1 1 

with reference to the difficulties of the 
resurrection suggested by the scribes in 
the problem of the sevenfold widow, 
" Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, 
nor the power of God " (Matt. xxii. 29- 
33). 

At other times the plural is used to 
gather up a number of prophetic pas- 
sages, or the sum total of their meaning, 
as when Jesus rebuked Peter for drawing 
the sword to defend him, " Put up again 
thy sword into its place : for all they that 
take the sword, shall perish with the 
sword. Or thinkest thou that I cannot 
beseech my Father, and he shall even 
now send me more than twelve legions 
of angels ? How then should the Scrip- 
tures be fulfilled, that thus it must be ? " 
(Matt, xx vi. 52-54). Also in his words 
to those who arrested him : " Are ye 
come out as against a robber with swords 
and staves to seize me ? I sat daily in the 
temple teaching, and ye took me not. 
But all this is come to pass, that the 



1 1 2 The Scriptures 

Scriptures of the prophets might be ful- 
filled " (Matt. xxvi. 55, 56). 

The term "Writing" or "Writings " 
is imployed interchangeably with " Scrip- 
ture " or "Scriptures." The frequency 
with which Jesus used the expression 
" It is written " is significant of his loyalty 
to the written Word. In his temptation 
in the wilderness he foiled his adversary 
thrice in this manner, in each case quot- 
ing from Deuteronomy, which is the 
most discredited of all the bpoks of 
Scripture among the radical critics of our 
time (Matt. ii. 5-10). Of John the Bap- 
tist he said, " This is he of whom it is 
written, Behold, I send my messenger 
before thy face, who shall prepare thy 
way before thee " (Matt. xi. 10). In 
his cleansing of the temple he said, "It 
is written, My house shall be called a 
house of prayer ; but ye make it a den 
of robbers " (Matt. xxi. 13). To the 
scribes and Pharisees he said, " Well did 
Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it 



Specific Teaching 113 

is written, This people honoreth me 
with their lips, but their heart is far from 
me" (Mark vii. 6). To the disciples 
who asked him, " How is it that the 
scribes say that Elijah must first come ?" 
he answered and told them " Elijah in- 
deed cometh first, and restoreth all 
things : and how is it written of the Son 
of man, that he should suffer many things 
and be set at nought ? But I say unto 
you, that Elijah is come, and they have 
also done unto him whatsoever they 
would, even as it is written of him " 
(Mark ix. 12-13). To the Jews who 
murmured at his hard sayings he an- 
swered, " It is written in the prophets, 
And they shall all be taught of God. 
Every one that hath heard from the 
Father, and hath learned, cometh unto 
me" (John vi. 45). He speaks of the 
teachings of Moses, in general and par- 
ticular, as " Writings" (Matt. xix. 7; 
Mark x. 4, xii. 19; Luke xx. 28; John 
v. 46-^47). To the Pharisees, calling his 

H 



1 1 4 The Scriptures 

credentials in question, he said, "Yea 
and in your law it is written, that the 
witness of two men is true. I am he 
that beareth witness of myself, and the 
Father that sent me beareth witness of 
me " (John viii. 17-18). And when 
they would have stoned him for making 
himself equal with God, he answered, 
" Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye 
are gods ? " (John x. 34). In his farewell 
interview with the disciples in the upper 
room he said, " The Son of man goeth, 
even as it is written of him : but woe 
unto that man through whom the Son 
of man is betrayed ! " (Matt. xxvi. 24). 
And again, " All ye shall be offended in 
me this night : for it is written, I will 
smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the 
flock shall be scattered abroad " (Matt. 
xxvi. 31). And again, " This cometh to 
pass, that the word may be fulfilled that 
is written in their law, They hated me 
without a cause " (John xv. 25). 

(3) Another of the familiar titles which 



Specific Teaching 115 

Jesus applies to the inspired volume is " The 
Law." It must be remembered that 
the Theocracy or government of the 
Jews had no constitution or legal code 
apart from the Scriptures. For this rea- 
son the scribes were also called "lawyers," 
their special business being not only to 
transcribe but to expound the Word of 
God. 

The Law is frequently used by our 
Lord as a general term including the 
whole Book: as where- he says, "Is it 
not written in your law, I said, Ye are 
gods ? " (John x. 34), his reference being 
not to any portion of the law proper but 
to Psalm lxxxi. 6. Also in defending his 
credentials, "Yea and in your law it is 
written that the witness of two men is 
true" (John viii. 17). To his disciples 
he speaks of his rejection on this wise : 
"This cometh to pass, that the Word 
may be fulfilled that is written in their 
law, They hated me without a cause " 
(John xv. 25 cf. Ps. xxxv. 19 and Ps. lxix. 



u6 The Scriptures 

4). And where he defends his disciples 
for plucking the ears of grain on the Sab- 
bath by reference to precedent : " Have 
ye not read in the law, that on the Sab- 
bath day the priests in the temple pro- 
fane the Sabbath, and are guiltless ?" 
(Matt. xii. 5 ; cf . Numbers xxviii. 9). Also 
in his denunciation of the Pharisees " Ye 
tithe mint and anise and cummin, and 
have left undone the weightier matters 
of the law/' these weightier matters be- 
ing specified as " justice, and mercy, and 
faith," which are fundamental principles 
in the higher ethics of the Law (Matt. 
xxiii. 23). And in his interview with a 
certain lawyer, " What is written in the 
law? How readest thou?" (Luke x. 
26). To the Pharisees, again, "It is 
easier for heaven and earth to pass away 
than for one tittle of the law to fall" 
(Luke xvi. 17). 

This title is also applied specifically to 
the Pentateuch, which was the first of the 
three divisions familiar to every pupil in 



Specific Teaching 117 

the rabbinical schools, to wit, " The Law 
the Prophets and the Hagiographa. ' ' To 
the disciples in the upper room, after his 
resurrection, he said in terms which sug- 
gest a customary mode of instruction, 
" These are my words which I spake 
unto you, while I was yet with you, that 
all things must needs be fulfilled which 
are written in the law of Moses, and the 
prophets, and the psalms concerning 
me " (Luke xxiv. 44), where the third 
division is named after the first and most 
important book in it. 

The Law as contained in the Penta- 
teuch was divided into (a) The Moral 
Law, or Decalogue, in which were laid 
down certain fundamental principles, in- 
tended to be of binding force forever, 
because they are interwoven with the 
very nerves and sinews of the human 
constitution ; (b) The Civil Law, which 
was intended to apply particularly to the 
government of Israel ; but involving cer- 
tain vital facts which were destined to 



1 1 8 The Scriptures 

outlive the theocracy and furnish the 
basis of jurisprudence for every age ; 
(c) The Ceremonial Law ; an elaborate 
cult of rites and ceremonies, centering in 
the Messiah as "the Hope of Israel" 
and, for that reason, finding its ful- 
fillment and end in Jesus. This is that 
"handwriting of ordinances' y which was 
finally removed by Christ, who " nailed 
it to his cross, taking it out of the way." 
" The Law and the Prophets " was 
another phrase used to designate the Old 
Testament as a whole. It suggests a 
two-fold division; "the Law," that is, 
the Pentateuch, and "the Prophets," in- 
cluding all the rest. In announcing the 
Golden Rule Jesus said, " This is the 
law and the prophets," meaning that it 
comprehends the ethical system of the 
entire Scriptures (Matt. vii. 12). A like 
use of this title is found in his announce- 
ment of the summary : " Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul and with all thy 



Specific Teaching 119 

mind. This is the great and first com- 
mandment. And a second like unto it 
is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself. On these two commandments 
the whole law hangeth and the proph- 
ets" (Matt. xxii. 37-40). In repelling 
the thought that his purpose was to abro- 
gate the Moral Law or to annul any of 
the vital principles of the Mosaic Law 
in general, he said : " Think not that I 
came to destroy the law or the prophets : 
I came not to destroy, but to fulfill. For 
verily I say unto you, Till heaven and 
earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall 
in no wise pass away from the law, till 
all things be accomplished " (Matt. v. 17, 
18). 

The comprehensive and flexible use 
of the phrase is seen in the statement 
" All the prophets and the law prophesied 
until John " (Matt. xi. 13). 

The Law of Moses is a phrase of sim- 
ilar import. " Did not Moses give you 
the law?" (John vii. 10). "That the 



120 The Scriptures 

Law of Moses may not be broken' 5 
(John vii. 23). "That all things must 
needs be fulfilled, which are written in 
the Law of Moses concerning me " 
(Luke xxiv. 44). 

It will be seen that in each case of the 
three titles referred to — the Word, the 
Scripture and the Law — tribute is paid 
to the divine origin and authority of the 
Book. By "the Word" we are given 
to understand that Jesus accepted it as a 
communication from God. In his use 
of the term " Scripture " we perceive 
that he approved it, in its written form, 
as intended for common use. And 
when he called it "the Law" he empha- 
sized its authority as a trustworthy rule 
of life. 

Had he said nothing further of the 
Bible than what is clearly suggested in 
these titles, we should have sufficient 
reason to affirm that he believed it. 
But, as we shall see, his teaching goes 
much further ; it is not confined to mere 



Specific Teaching 121 

intimations and suggestions ; before we 
are through with this investigation we 
shall find him confirming it with a Yea 
and Amen, and placing the red seal of 
divine authority upon it. 

III. Positive Affirmations by Jesus 

"It is impossible to frame a law" so 
runs the proverb, " through which an 
astute lawyer cannot drive a coach and 
four." In other words, the definitive 
possibilities of human language are but 
a frail barrier against the subtle arts and 
stratagems of sophistry. A reasonably 
clever dialectician finds no difficulty in 
explaining away any ordinary proposition 
under the specious pretense of explaining 
it. One by one the sayings of Jesus re- 
specting the truth of Scripture have been 
dealt with in this manner ; and the method 
is best exposed and controverted by such 
a comprehensive survey of those sayings 
in to to as to make the intent of Jesus per- 
fectly clear. This having been done, it 



122 The Scriptures 

remains to indicate certain of his state- 
ments which are of so positive a charac- 
ter as to make instantly obvious the 
duplicity of any attempt at evasion, 
equivocation, circumvention or subter- 
fuge. 

( 1 ) . He affirms that the Scriptures are true. 
As he said of himself, "I am the truth ;" 
so in his sacerdotal prayer he said of Scrip- 
ture, " Thy word is truth." At the time 
of that utterance, in view of his approach- 
ing death, he was commending his dis- 
ciples to the care of the Holy Spirit, 
by whose influence in sanctification they 
were to be kept, controlled, endued with 
power, directed in service, and built up 
and established in the most holy faith. 
It is an important fact, never to be for- 
gotten, that all this is wrought by the 
Holy Spirit through the instrumentality 
of the Scriptures ; a fact which Jesus 
distinctly recognized and taught in this 
solemn petition, " Sanctify them in the 
truth; thy Word is truth" (John xvii. 17). 



Specific Teaching 123 

Observe the form of the statement ; he 
does not say, Thy word contains truth, 
or even Thy word is true, but "Thy 
word is truth." The emphasis of lan- 
guage could go no further. 

If Jesus had said " The Bible contains 
truth " he would have said what ever- 
body knows and concedes and does not 
particularly care for. In point of fact it 
would not have been worth saying at all. 
It is true the Bible ".contains" some of 
the most sublime doctrinal and ethical 
wisdom ; but what of it ? That fact does 
not differentiate the Bible from other 
books. It makes the superiority of the 
Bible a matter not of quality but of mere 
more or less. Some of the most glow- 
ing and enthusiastic tributes to the ex- 
cellence of certain portions of Scripture 
have fallen from the lips of atheists and 
infidels. It means nothing, then, to say 
that the Bible " contains " truth. The 
question is whether it contains it in pay- 
ing quantities or not. 



124 The Scriptures 

Furthermore had Jesus in such man- 
ner affirmed the partial truth of Scripture 
he would thereby have intimated, also, 
that it is partly false. A solution of any- 
thing involves a solvent of something else. 
It should be observed, just here, that 
when reference is made by the destruc- 
tive critics, to the errors of Scripture, they 
do not mean such as would be likely to 
arise from transcriptions running through 
a period of some thousands of years but 
they mean downright misstatements aris- 
ing from ignorance, misapprehension or 
disingenuousness on the part of the origi- 
nal writers. This being so, it would be in- 
teresting to know how these critics would 
have the average reader distinguish be- 
tween the false and true. Would it not 
be wise to have an Advisory Board made 
up of such as deem themselves compe- 
tent to say just where the men (who 
" spake from God, being moved by the 
Holy Spirit ") were wise and honest and 
where they were otherwise ? Our Lord 



Specific Teaching 125 

(John v. 39, either version) encouraged 
the humblest of truth-seekers to read the 
Bible ; but this cannot be done with im- 
punity if there is an admixture of false- 
hood in it. As well invite a company of 
children to sit down at a table where un- 
known portions of the viands and condi- 
ments are known to be poisonous. " Ah, 
but the errors are only in non-essentials." 
Who knows that? Or who presumes 
to determine it ? Or who can give assur- 
ance of it? No Biblical critic nor all 
Biblical critics together can regulate the 
runways of error when once the sluices 
are thrown open. The only safe plan 
would be to make the Church a co-ordi- 
nate source of authority in spiritual things 
and let it put all false and dangerous por- 
tions of the Bible into an Index Expurga- 
torius. That would settle it. 

And further still, if Jesus had meant 
that the Bible merely "contains " truth, 
it could no longer be called " the best of 
books." Put a hundred of the standard 



126 The Scriptures 

works of science and history into a heap, 
and over against them place these Scrip- 
tures : then ask your destructive critic to 
select from among them the least trust- 
worthy of all, and if he is an honest man 
he will without hesitation point to the 
Bible. We used to think it only moder- 
ate praise to call the Bible " the best of 
books," but even this tribute must, 
under such circumstances, be withheld 
from it. 

But, worst of all, if Jesus meant that 
the Bible merely "contains " truth, he 
made it practically worthless for the 
guidance of life. To say that a book 
which is partly false can be relied upon 
as an " infallible rule of faith and prac- 
tice " looks to common people, who are 
as yet unfamiliar with the technique of 
Biblical criticism, like a reprehensible 
use of the English tongue. If it be re- 
plied that the purpose of the Scriptures 
is simply to save a man from hell-fire 
and not to instruct him in science and 



Specific Teaching 127 

chronology, we respectfully challenge 
the right of any man to limit the ends 
and uses of revelation in that way. If it 
be said that the alleged errors of Scripture 
are in non-essentials alone, we humbly 
challenge the right of any one to draw a 
line in Scripture- between the things 
which are important enough to be true 
and those which are trivial enough to be 
false or true as the case may be. If a 
passer-by were to enter an apothecary's 
shop and thus insist on marking off the 
essentials from the non-essentials among 
the materia medica he would be ousted 
for his pains. But the disparity between 
God and our wisest philosopher is so 
much greater than that which separates 
the apothecary from his presumptuous 
visitor that our imagination breaks down 
in its endeavor to surmise what the di- 
vine opinion of such " advanced scholar- 
ship " must be. 

All such difficulties, however, are re- 
moved by simply taking Jesus at his 



128 The Scriptures 

word. He was accustomed to say what 
he meant and the safe way is to assume 
that he meant precisely what he said. 
The best aids to exegesis, in the long run, 
are not ingenuity and cleverness but 
honesty and common sense. 

(2). He affirmed Inspiration and left no 
reasonable doubt as to what he meant by 
it. Not long ago it was publicly an- 
nounced that one of Rubens' pictures 
was for sale in a Fifth Avenue gallery. 
On my way there I met a man expert in 
art matters, who said : "A Rubens, for- 
sooth ! It is a counterfeit ; there is not 
a trace of Rubens in it." Whereupon I 
turned back. What did I care for a 
Rubens that Rubens never saw ? Every- 
thing depends upon the authenticity of 
the signature. Anybody can write a 
check and sign it " Rothschild " ; but 
the trouble is, where is the banker who 
would cash it ? The question is this, Is 
the Bible what it purports to be ? Is it a 
genuine autograph, bearing the true 



Specific Teaching 129 

sign-manual of the living God ? Let us 
have the pros and cons, and weigh them 
all. We can only come to one of 
two conclusions : it is divinely given, or 
it is not. If it came from God, it can be 
absolutely depended on; if not, my 
special interest in the book ends, here 
and now. It is no more to me hence- 
forth than any other of the important 
works of literature. If, however, it is 
God-breathed, and therefore true and 
trustworthy, I am ready to receive it as 
my infallible rule of faith and practice. 
I will henceforth take its statement as the 
last word respecting my creed and con- 
duct. 

But what does Inspiration mean ? 
The words of Jesus, as recorded in 
Mark xii. 36, are in evidence : " For 
David himself said in the Holy Spirit, 
The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou 
on my right hand, till I make thine en- 
emies the footstool of thy feet." Here 
is a clear reference to that singular influ- 



130 The Scriptures 

ence of the Spirit on the minds of the 
sacred writers which produced the Book 
called "The Word of God." 

We are sometimes advised by interested 
parties that the Biblical controversy is 
"a mere quarrel about definitions." 
Nothing of the sort ; but, suppose it 
were, are not definitions worth while? 
And particularly the definition of inspira- 
tion ; since the whole question of the 
trustworthiness of the Scriptures rests 
upon it ? At this point, fortunately, all 
doubt is resolved by the fact that the 
Scriptures furnish their own definition 
and that Christ approves it. 

The word "inspiration " is used in 
Paul's second Epistle to Timothy where 
he writes " Every scripture inspired of 
God, is also profitable for teaching, for 
reproof, for correction, for instruction, 
which is in righteousness, that the man of 
God may be complete, furnished com- 
pletely unto every good work " (II Tim. 
iii. 16, 17). The word here rendered 



Specific Teaching 131 

" inspired " is theopnustos (©€07n>voros) , 
literally "breathed of God." 

The inspiration of the Scriptures, thus 
defined by the Scriptures themselves as a 
divine in-breathing, is of a singular and 
exclusive sort, and must be clearly dis- 
tinguished from other forms of so-called 
" inspiration.' ' (1) It is not human rea- 
son, which is a generic gift. " And God 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
life ; and man became a living soul " 
(Genesis ii. 7), that is, divinely quick- 
ened and, above all other creatures, in 
possession of the power to grasp spiritual 
things and commune with his Creator. 

(2) Not genius, which is an inborn gift, 
and may be used for good or evil. 
There have been gloriously gifted ones 
who used their power as did the red 
dragon in the Apocalypse, drawing after 
it one-third of the stars of heaven to hurl 
them down into the endless night. 

(3) Not spiritual illumination, which is 
the privilege of all believers. Its pur- 



132 The Scriptures 

pose is personal holiness. It is indeed a 
divine in-breathing (Ezekiel xxxvii. 9), by 
which the soul, being quickened, is built 
up in character and continually made 
more and more alive unto God. (4) The 
inspiration here referred to, in connec- 
tion with the composition of the Scrip- 
tures, may be thus defined : It is a 
spiritual influence qualifying and moving 
certain persons to communicate divine 
truth infallibly. 

Now going back to Christ's reference 
to Psalm ex. we hear him affirming that 
David said a certain thing " in the Holy 
Spirit," which is a clear statement of the 
method indicated in theopnustia or in- 
spiration. The men who " spake from 
God, being moved by the Holy Spirit 
(II Pet. i. 21), were so inspired that God 
breathed through them in communicat- 
ing truth.* 

* On another occasion we hear him saying to his dis- 
ciples, "And when they bring you before the synagogues, and 
the rulers, and the authorities, be not anxious how or what 
ye shall answer, or what ye shall say : for the Holy Spirit 



Specific Teaching 133 

The question which Jesus here ad- 
dressed to his adversaries with reference 
to Psalm ex. is one that might profitably 
engage the attention of those who, while 
professing to believe in Christ, deny the 
singular and entire inspiration of the 
Scriptures: "How then doth David in 
the Spirit call him Lord saying, The 
Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my 
right hand, till I put thine enemies under- 
neath thy feet?" Is there anything in 
the diluted theories of " inspiration " 
which can answer that question ? If it 
were propounded to David himself his 
reply would probably be something like 
this, "I, being under the influence of 
the Spirit, heard Jehovah say to my Son, 
' Sit thou on my right hand till I put 
thine enemies underneath thy feet.' I 
saw him place the rod of divine authority 
in his hand, saying, ' Rule thou in the 

shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say " 
(Luke xii. n, 12). This is inspiration as Christ taught it 
and as his people are to understand it. 



134 The Scriptures 

midst of thine enemies.' I saw a great 
company of soldiers gather at his com- 
mand, not as mercenaries but willing in 
the day of his power, ten thousand times 
ten thousand and thousand of thousands 
like dewdrops from the womb of the 
morning. I saw Jehovah lift fiis hand 
and heard him swear, ' Thou art a priest 
forever, after the order of Melchizedek.' 
And to me he said, ' The Lord at thy 
hand shall strike through kings in the 
day of his indignation/ All this I saw 
and heard when in the Spirit ; and more 
I know not." 

One thing is clear : when Jesus re- 
ferred to the Scriptures as written by 
men under the influence of the Spirit he 
separated those scriptures generically 
from all other " literature " whatsoever. 
To his mind, the inspiration of these 
writers was a singular sort of inspiration, 
which produced a singular book. In his 
teaching it is presented as the one book 
having authority. The "traditions of 



Specific Teaching 135 

the elders/' which were popularly asso- 
ciated with the Scriptures, were not in- 
frequently mentioned by him but always 
with the purpose of discrediting their 
equally binding force. As when he 
said, "Ye reject* the commandment 
of God, that ye may keep your tradi- 
tion" (Mark vii. 9). Thus the Bible 
was to him sui generis, literally ; and 
inspiration, as he taught it, was some- 
thing which belonged not to literature 
generally but to one book only, namely, 
the Word of God. 

(3). He affirmed that the Scriptures are 
the medium of spiritual life. So far as the 
present inquiry goes it makes no differ- 
ence whether the words of Jesus re- 
corded in John v. 39 be rendered 
" Search " or " Ye search the Scriptures/' 
In the original the imperative and in- 
dicative are identical in form. For the 
former rendering we have the authority 
of Augustine, Chrysostom, Calvin, Mar- 

* Margin, " frustrate." 



136 The Scriptures 

tin Luther, the Greek fathers generally, 
and the King James Version. On the 
other side are Beza, Bengel, Erasmus 
and the Revised Versions. But there 
need be no battle royal over the matter, 
since the meaning is practically the same 
either way. Our Lord was speaking to 
the Jewish savants, who cavilled at his di- 
vinity. He called the Scriptures to wit- 
ness that he was the very Son of God. 
"Search them," he said, "and see." 
Search them indeed ! That was distinc- 
tively the business of these men. They 
were Bibliolaters. They scrutinized 
with the utmost care the letter of 
holy writ ; they counted its syllables ; 
they weighed the relative merit of 
its precepts ; they analyzed and class- 
ified it ; they treated it as a fetich, de- 
clining to touch it with unwashed hands. 
" Search it indeed ! We are the Biblical 
inquisitors." "Aye," said the Master, 
"ye do search it, but in your devotion 
to its letter ye lose the spirit of it. Ye 



Specific Teaching 137 

do search the Scriptures, for in them ye 
think ye have eternal life. And, behold, 
these are they which testify of me. Yet, 
strange to tell, ye will not come unto me 
for that eternal life ye seek. Thus ye 
miss the deep meaning and glory of 
the divine Word ! " 

One thing is very clear : our Lord un- 
reservedly approves the object of the 
quest. He distinctly intimates to these 
Jews that they were right in searching 
the Scriptures for life. ' He says that the 
life is there if they can only find it ; and 
that they can find it by finding him in 
the Book, because he himself is the life 
and the Book is full of him. He tells 
them that they cannot pursue their quest 
too earnestly; the word for "search" 
being ip aware, which is commonly used 
of a hound on the scent. In one of 
iEsop's fables he tells of a hound which 
was pursuing a hare, falling behind, and 
at length abandoning the chase. A 
goatherd who was passing by, jeered at 



138 The Scriptures 

the hound, saying, " Shame that a hare 
should get the better of thee." " But 
you forget/' the hound replied, " that it 
is one thing to be running for your din- 
ner, and another to be running for your 
life." The deep longing of every earnest 
soul is for eternal life. The young ruler 
who threw himself before the Master's 
feet intensely desired this : " Good 
Master, what shall I do that I may in- 
herit eternal life ? " The man who, in 
the allegory, fled from the City of De- 
struction, thrust his fingers into his ears, 
lest he should be turned aside by the 
appeals of friends and kinsfolk, and ran, 
crying, "Life! Life! Eternal Life!" 
We were made in the likeness of God. 
There is something beyond and beneath 
the surface of things. Our spiritual na- 
ture craves something better than the 
world can give. The Bible holds the 
clew of the maze, and the earnestness of 
our search of the Scriptures will be meas- 



Specific Teaching 139 

ured by the sincerity of our longing for 
life. - 

If these things are so it is of immense 
importance that a man should preserve 
his confidence in the Scriptures. It is 
true, they need no defence. They are 
in no danger ; but • men are in danger of 
losing their faith in them. It was a sor- 
rowful day for Nero when he lost con- 
fidence in Seneca, his tutor. In his 
boyhood he had learned to love the 
old philosopher and, for a time, duti- 
fully followed his teachings. But there 
were those among his associates who 
laughed at Seneca's melancholy face and 
pointed their fingers at his scholar's 
robe. Nero continued to love him and 
entertained him at the royal table ; but 
he ceased to heed his instructions. It 
is to be feared that some professing 
Christians regard their Bibles in the 
same way. They love them still, but 
there is a waning of confidence. Never- 
theless, though they make shipwreck of 



140 The Scriptures 

their faith, the Book stands true. The 
life is there, though they may lose it. 

(4) He affirmed, in particular, the truth of 
those portions of Scripture which are most 
discredited in certain quarters in these days. 

The Creation of Man. To the Phari- 
sees who questioned him as to the mar- 
riage relation he said, " Have ye not read, 
that he who made them from the begin- 
ning made them male and female n 
(Matt. xix. 4). This is a clear approval 
of the inspired account of the origin of 
the race. Jesus evidently did not believe 
that " Adam was a myth/' If the record 
in Genesis is not correct, either this di- 
vine Teacher did not know it or did not 
wish his hearers to know it.* 

* The attitude of Sir William Dawson toward the Genesis 
record was precisely that of Jesus : he said, " I know nothing 
about the origin of man save what the Bible says about it, 
namely that God created him ; and I do not know any one 
who does." .... Lord Kelvin, also : " Mathematics and 
dynamics fail us when we contemplate the earth fitted for life 
but lifeless, and try to imagine the commencement of life upon 
it. This certainly did not take place by any action of chem- 
istry or electricity, or crystalline grouping of molecules under 



Specific Teaching 141 

The Story of Cain and Abel. This is 
commonly regarded by the destructive 
critics as purely legendary or allegorical ; 
but Christ referred to "the blood of 
Abel the righteous" (Matt, xxiii. 35) 
precisely as if he believed it. 

The Flood. In the discussion as to 
whether the Scriptural account of the 
Flood is correct or not, scientists have 
generally conceded its substantial accu- 
racy as proven by geology but the de- 
structive critics are as a body arrayed 
against it. Jesus referred to it on this 
wise : "As were the days of Noah, so 
shall be the coming of the Son of man. 
For as in those days which were before 
the flood they were eating and drinking, 
marrying and giving in marriage, until 
the day that Noah entered into the ark, 
and they knew not until the flood came, 
and took them all away ; so shall be the 

the influence of force, or by any possible kind of fortuitous 
concourse of atoms. We must pause, face to face with the 
mystery and miracle of the creation of living creatures." 



142 The Scriptures 

coming of the Son of man " (Matt. xxiv. 
37-39). 

The Historicity of the Patriarchs. The 
leaders of the anti-Biblical school of criti- 
cism are practically agreed that Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob were legendary char- 
acters ; but Jesus held the opposite view. 
In speaking of the resurrection of the 
dead he said, " Have ye not read that 
which was spoken unto you by God, 
saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the 
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?" 
(Matt. xxii. 31, 32). To say that he re- 
ferred in such language to men who had 
not only succumbed to death but had 
never really existed is simply to stultify 
him. And again, " I say unto you, that 
many shall come from the east and the 
west, and shall sit down with Abraham, 
and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of 
heaven " (Matt. viii. 11). And on an- 
other occasion he said to the cavilling 
Jews, " Your father Abraham rejoiced 
to see my day ; and he saw it, and was 



Specific Teaching 143 

glad." And when they said, "Thou 
art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou 
seen Abraham?" he answered, "Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham 
was born, I am " (John viii. 56-58). 

The Destruction of Sodom, It is agreed 
on all hands, among the radical critics, 
that there was no historic basis for this 
" fable. " Nevertheless Jesus said, "In 
the days of Lot they ate, they drank, 
they bought, they sold, they planted, they 
builded ; but in the day that Lot went 
out from Sodom it rained fire and brim- 
stone from heaven, and destroyed them 
all " (Luke xvii. 28, 29). 

Lot's Wife. The story of this poor 
woman has been laughed out of court 
by many "advanced scholars" who pro- 
fess an intense devotion to Christ. But 
Christ used her tragic death as a warning 
to the half-hearted (Luke xvii. 32). It 
does not seem to have occurred to him 
that there was no truth in it. 

The Exodus. Kuenen says, " The 



144 The Scriptures 

Exodus, the passage of the Jordan, the 
wandering and the settlement in Canaan, 
as they are described, are simply impos- 
sible ; " and the destructive critics of 
whom he is the distinguished leader agree 
with him. So did not Jesus. He men- 
tioned with approval many of the events 
connected with it. (a) The Call of 
Moses at the Burning Bush (Luke xx. 
37-38). (b) The Passover (Luke xxii. 
15, 16). (c) The Manna : " Your fathers 
ate the manna in the wilderness " (John 
vi. 49). (d) The Brazen Serpent (John 
iii. 14). 

The Pentateuch as a Whole. It was to 
" the five books of Moses " — known 
among the Jews and accepted in like 
manner by the Samaritans as "The 
Law" — that he referred in the solemn 
words, " If ye believed Moses, ye would 
believe me ; for he wrote of me. But 
if ye believe not his writings, how shall 
ye believe my words ? " (John v. 46, 47). 
This is in striking contrast with the as- 



Specific Teaching 145 

sertion of Kuenen, "All this representa- 
tion in the Hexateuch is absurd; " or of 
Wellhausen, " It is full of historical fic- 
tions ; " * or of Holzinger, " Its historical 
presuppositions of the giving of the Law 
are whimsies that force a smile ; " f or of 
Smend, " The representation of the 
Pentateuch proves itself not historical ; " J 
or of Piebenbring, " The Priest Code, 
the heart of the Pentateuch, is legend, 
myth, saga, tradition, and not trustworthy, 
a proved historical fiction, bald, trans- 
parent fiction, artifice, fantasy, false his- 
tory, absurd, impossible, contradictory, 
inconceivable, unthinkable and false, a 
bare-faced invention." § Is it not clear 
that between Christ and such criticism 
there is a bridgeless gulf ; and that a true 
Christian will scarcely undertake the dif- 
ficult feat of standing either midway or 
on both sides of it ? 

* Wellhausen's " History of Israel." 
t Holzinger's " Introduction to the Hexateuch" 
% Smend's " history of Old Testament Religion" 
§ Piebenbring's " Theology of the Old Testament" 

I 



146 The Scriptures 

The Authorship of the Pentateuch. It is 
frequently said that it " makes no differ- 
ence who wrote the books of the Bible so 
long as they are true." This is correct, 
except when such authorship is desig- 
nated in the books themselves or when 
Christ definitely states it. Now it so 
happens that Christ directly or indirectly 
ascribes the authorship of the Pentateuch 
to Moses no less than ten times (Matt. 
xix. 7, 8 ; xxiii. 2 ; Mark x. 3 ; Luke xvi. 
29, 31 ; xxiv. 27 ; John v. 45, 46, vii. 19, 
23). In this the destructive critics, with 
one accord, take issue with him.* 

*Dr. Henry Van Dyke of Princeton, in a Lecture on 
" Egypt in the Bible," in which he gives special attention to 
archaeological research in its bearing on the authorship of the 
Pentateuch, reaches this conclusion : " What, then, shall we 
think of the origin of this account, as we read it in the light 
of these discoveries ? Is it likely to be the invention of a 
later age, a fiction constructed by some clever priest many 
centuries after Israel had come out of Egypt, or, perhaps (to 
use a Hibernicism, for the sake of brevity), many centuries 
after Israel had never been there ? Such a supposition would 
involve two miracles. First, the possession by the supposed 
novelist of an utterly abnormal literary skill ; and, second, a 
preternatural foreknowledge of the archaeological discoveries 



Specific Teaching 147 

Deutero?tomy. If this book was writ- 
ten at the time and in the manner sug- 
gested by Ewald and others of his way 
of thinking, it is simply a bold forgery, 
unworthy of a moment's credence or 
consideration. That Christ had no 
sympathy w r ith their views is evident from 
the fact that in his temptation in the 
wilderness (Matt. iv. 1-11), needing 
three arrows, he plucked them all from 

which have actually been reserved for the present century to 
make." 

" It certainly seems more natural, more reasonable, to sup- 
pose that this story of the patriarchs in Egypt is substantially 
the work of a man who, while he was himself a Hebrew — 
as the tone of the narrative shows — was at the same 
time learned in all the learning of the Egyptians ; one who 
was familiar with the ancient customs and observances of 
both races ; one who possessed a vivid knowledge of manners 
and of events which were subsequently lost for many centu- 
ries in the gloom of oblivion ; and one (as we may infer from 
certain indications which I have not time to mention) who 
lived not earlier than the nineteenth Egyptian dynasty. Such 
a man was Moses. And there is no reason under the heavens, 
nor upon the earth, nor has any reason yet been discovered 
under the earth, why we should not think that the substance 
and much of the actual language of this ancient narrative 
come to us from the hand of Moses." 



148 The Scriptures 

this quiver: "It is written, Man shall 
not live by bread alone but by every 
word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
of God" (Deut. viii. 3) ; "It is written 
again, Thou shalt not make trial of the 
Lord thy God (Deut. vi. 16); "It is 
written, Thou shalt worship the Lord 
thy God, and him only shalt thou serve " 
(Deut. vi. 13). 

Prophecy. In view of the fact that the 
supernatural factor is wholly eliminated 
from prophecy by the destructive critics 
it may be well to observe that the invari- 
able teaching of Jesus was just the re- 
verse. He rang the changes on the 
word " fulfilled " and honored the proph- 
ets whenever he mentioned them. 
The connection of Elijah with the 
Samaritan famine and his miracle at 
Sarepta (Luke iv. 25, 26) ; Elisha and the 
Syrian leper (Luke iv. 27) ; the destruc- 
tion of Tyre and Sidon in pursuance of 
the predictions of Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel, Joel and Amos (Matt. xi. 20- 



Specific Teaching 149 

22) ; the conversion of Nineveh under the 
preaching of Jonah (Matt. xii. 41); 
Malachi's prophecy of John the Baptist 
(Matt. xi. 10 cf. Mai. iii. 1) ; the chain 
of Messianic prediction running through 
"all the Scriptures" (John v. 39, also 
Luke xxiv. 27) ; • the lurid f oregleams of 
the end of the world (Luke xxi. 22), in- 
cluding those of Daniel, the most sav- 
agely discredited of all the prophets by 
modern rationalistic critics (Matt. xxiv. 
15) ; these and other like references of 
Jesus to the prophets of the Old Economy 
— taken in connection with the fact that 
he nowhere, by word or syllable or 
slightest suggestion, intimates the con- 
trary — are incontrovertible evidence of 
his unswerving faith in the absolute truth 
and trustworthiness of the prophecies. 

Jonah and the Great Fish. The Jews 
did not deny the miracles of Jesus. 
There were present in their assemblages 
those whose sight had been restored, 
whose leprous scales had been wiped 



150 The Scriptures 

away, whose palsied limbs had been 
restored. In the face of such witnesses 
there was no room for denial or doubt. 
The only question was, Whence did 
Jesus derive the power to work such 
miracles ? Was it from above or from 
beneath ? The scribes and Pharisees 
intimated that it was from Satan. " No," 
said Jesus, "it is divine power. I can 
do nothing except the Father be with 
me. I and my Father are one/' Then 
said the scribes and Pharisees, " Let us 
see your credentials. If this power be 
from heaven, show us a sign from 
heaven to attest it." He answered on 
this wise, " An evil and adulterous gen- 
eration seeketh after a sign ; and there 
shall no sign be given to it but the sign 
of Jonah the prophet : for as Jonah was 
three days and three nights in the belly 
of the whale ; so shall the Son of man 
be three days and three nights in the 
heart of the earth " (Matt. xii. 38-40). 
This was, indeed, not a sign "from 



Specific Teaching 151 

heaven/' but from earth, from the dark- 
ness of the tomb, from the belly of hell. 
How runs the record ? " Now the 
word of the Lord came unto Jonah the 
son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to 
Nineveh, that great city, and cry against 
it ; for their wickedness is come up be- 
fore me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto 
Tarshish from the presence of the Lord ; 
and he went down to Joppa, and found 
a ship going to Tarshish : so he paid the 
fare thereof and went down into it, to 
go with them unto Tarshish from the 
presence of the Lord. But the Lord 
sent out a great wind into the sea, and 
there was a mighty tempest in the sea, 
so that the ship was like to be broken. 
Then the mariners took up Jonah and 
cast him forth into the sea : and the sea 
ceased from her raging. And the Lord 
prepared a great fish to swallow up 
Jonah ; and Jonah was in the belly of 
the fish three days and three nights. 
Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his 



152 The Scriptures 

God out of the fish's belly. And the 
Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited 
out Jonah upon the dry land." In his 
reference to this narrative our Lord did 
not only signify his assent to its truth, 
but he adventured the validity of his re- 
demptive work upon it. As his resur- 
rection was to be the seal of his atone- 
ment, so the truth of the Jonah narrative 
was the sign of his resurrection. Had 
he regarded it as mere folk-lore, he 
could not have made such use of it. We 
do not use fables as guarantees of fact. 
Try it in a court of justice. " As surely as 
Jason sought and found the Golden 
Fleece, so surely will I tell the truth." 
That would scarcely answer. You 
must certify by an indubitable fact like 
this : As surely as there is a God in 
heaven I will tell the truth ! Or try it 
in a common matter like the contract for 
a debt ; make out your note on this 
wise: "By the sign of Jack and the 
Beanstalk, or of Cinderella and her Crys- 



Specific Teaching 153 

tal Slipper, I promise to pay when this 
obligation falls due." Does this seem 
preposterous? It is not a whit more 
preposterous than to allege that Jesus 
referred to the " fable " of Jonah when 
called upon to produce a sign in verifi- 
cation of his own claims as the only be- 
gotten Son of God. 

Is it not a remarkable fact, as shown 
by the foregoing, that the very portions 
of Scripture which have been most vig- 
orously assailed and held up to ridicule 
by destructive critics are those which 
Jesus marked with his authoritative seal 
of approval? Verily, it looks as if he 
anticipated the things that are happen- 
ing in these days ! And in a clash of 
opinion between Jesus, as the champion 
of the divine Word, and all who oppose 
it, there is no room for hesitation on 
the part of those who sincerely follow 
him. They will be found standing with 
him. 

(5) He affirmed that the Scriptures are 



154 The Scriptures 

complete, sufficient and ultimate in all mat- 
ters touching the spiritual life (Luke xvi. 31). 
In one of the cities of Cesarea Philippi 
there were six brothers, well-to-do gentle- 
man — eminently respectable men. They 
attended to their own affairs. They 
probably paid their debts, obeyed the 
laws, and dealt justly with their fellow- 
men. This was the sum total of duty as 
they apprehended it. As to spiritual 
things they were non-committal. They 
said, "You tell us about God and immor- 
tality and righteousness and judgment to 
come. There may be something in these 
things, but we have no means of know- 
ing it. There are some things that we 
can see and handle with our hands. We 
are living in a world of actual toil and 
struggle. Things that pertain to this 
present world are real and tangible ; they 
He within the reach of our finger tips. 
As to things invisible, we know nothing ; 
let them pass." So they took no interest 
in God or religion, but lived purely sordid 



Specific Teaching 155 

lives. That was the worst that could be 
said about them. They were not thieves, 
murderers, or adulterers, but just world- 
ings, that was all. 

In course of time it happened that one 
of these brothers died — died, and went 
to his own place, that is, to the place for 
which his manner of life has fitted him. 
So it is written, " In hell he lifted up his 
eyes, being in torment/' His tongue 
was parched with an unquenchable thirst 
— a spiritual thirst; a vain longing for 
possibilities forever gone by. He suffered 
like Tantalus, who stood to his lips in 
clear water which receded whenever he 
sought to drink. The glories of heaven 
were in view, but he was shut out. He 
had chosen to turn his back on spiritual 
verities and now he was exiled from 
God. And " there was a great gulf fixed " 
— an eternal, bridgeless gulf. By reason 
of the fixity of his character he could 
never cross it. He was in his own place. 
He had no part in heaven, no fitness for it 



156 The Scriptures 

In the interview with Abraham, of 
which Jesus tells, this lost rich man makes 
a strange request : "I pray thee, there- 
fore, father, that thou wouldst send and 
admonish my five brethren, lest they also 
come into this place." Here is an im- 
plication that he, himself, had not been 
fairly treated. Had he known the dread- 
ful outcome he would never have passed 
his life in the pursuit of sordid things. 
He would have his brothers warned in 
time. Now observe the reply : " It 
would be in vain. They have Moses 
and the prophets ; if they hear not them 
neither will they be persuaded if one rise 
from the dead." For an angel to bear a 
message of warning or of invitation to 
those five busy worldings would be in- 
deed love's labor lost. Did they not re- 
ject the supernatural ? Would they not 
have pronounced the angelic visitor an 
impostor, an hallucination? Nor was 
there any common vocabulary by which 
this angel could have communicated with 



Specific Teach ing 1 5 7 

them. How difficult it is to express a 
spiritual fact in carnal terminology ! Our 
Lord himself found it no easy matter. 
He defined God as a Spirit; but what is 
spirit? He could but speak of heaven 
as a house of many mansions ; our eyes 
are so heavy, our ears so dull to spiritual 
things. And what could a celestial mes- 
senger say to these men ? " Your brother 
is in hell and Lazarus in the realms of 
endless joy. " Would they have believed 
that ? Would they not have said, t€ What ? 
Our respected brother Dives lost, and 
Lazarus, that miserable beggar, in heaven ? 
Nay, we believe not a word of it." 

Here then is the proposition which 
Jesus clearly lays down, There is no excuse 
for unbelief. The truth has power to save. 
Every man who has the Scriptures has a 
fair chance. The evidence is sufficient. 
If one believe not the Scriptures there is 
nothing on earth or in heaven that can 
convince him. 

(6) He affirmed that the Scriptures are the 



158 The Scriptures 

potent and determining factor in the propaga- 
tion of the gospel and the establishment of his 
kingdom on earth. In the Parable of the 
Sower (Matt. xiii. 1-19) he sets forth, un- 
der the figure of agriculture, the restora- 
tion of the world to God. In his expla- 
nation of that parable (Mark xiii. 18-23) 
he says that the good seed is " the Word 
of the kingdom/' In the parallel passage 
in Luke it is stated still more explicitly, 
"The seed is the Word of God "(Luke 
viii. 11). 

The following truths are involved in 
this parable : First, The Word, like the 
seed, has the power of life. Second, The 
Church, — as represented by the Apostles 
who gathered about Christ, — is made the 
custodian of the Word (cf. Romans iii. 
1-2). Third, The Church is under com- 
mission to "preach the Word" to the 
uttermost parts of the earth. Christ 
preached the Word ; so must we. This 
is our crusade. " The sword of the Spirit 
is the Word of God." Fourth, The na- 



Specific Teaching 159 

tions will never be converted until the 
Church, and Christian people generally, 
follow the plan which Jesus so distinctly 
marked out. " The field is the world " 
and "the seed is the Word ; " and until 
the seed is planted in the field there will 
be no universal harvest. This is what 
Jesus meant when he said, "This gospel 
of the kingdom shall be preached in all 
the world for a testimony unto all the na- 
tions ; and then shall the end come" 
(Matt. xxiv. 14). Fifth, In the meantime 
every Christian is responsible, up to the 
full measure of his influence, for seeing 
that no man anywhere is left in ignorance 
of the Scriptures. We cannot save others, 
but we can give them the word which 
has the power of salvation in it (Heb. iv. 
12). The business of a Christian, in this 
particular, is set forth particularly in the 
Parable of " the scribe which is instructed 
unto the kingdom " (Matt, xviii. 52). 
Sixth, The promise of Jesus that "the 
end shall come " when the Word is thus 



160 The Scriptures 

preached everywhere, is a clear corrobo- 
rating echo of the whole tenor of proph- 
ecy. Take for example the wonderful 
words of Isaiah, " For as the rain cometh 
down and the snow from heaven, and re- 
turneth not thither, but watereth the 
earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, 
and giveth seed to the sower and bread 
to the eater : so shall my Word be 
that goeth forth out of my mouth : it 
shall not return unto me void, but it shall 
accomplish that which I please, and it 
shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent 
it " (Isaiah lv. 10-13). 

We are not asked to regenerate the race. 
That is a divine prerogative. But we 
are required to disseminate the Word, 
through which God works in saving men. 
The Church shall not fulfil her obligation 
until she has sent messengers to the ut- 
termost parts of the earth, scattering the 
truths of Scripture as leaves of the Tree of 
Life. God will do the rest. His promise 
is sure : "Then shall the end come." 



Specific Teaching 161 

The experience of the past has proven 
beyond all peradventure that the secret 
of success in Evangelization is implicit 
faith in the Word. A Bible preacher is 
a man of power. A Bible preacher is 
a successful fisher of men. Not long be- 
fore Mr. Moody's death he showed me 
a petition signed by sixteen thousand of 
the people of Australia and Tasmania en- 
treating him to come over and "preach 
the old Bible and the blood of Christ." 
"Ah," said he "the old Book has not 
lost its power. Let them rail at it and 
revile it ; it stands as an impregnable rock. 
The power of salvation is in it!" This 
was the secret of that man's marvelous 
success. He sowed the Word ; and 
God, true to his promise, blessed it. , 

K 



CHAPTER IV 

The Provision of yesus for the 
IVriting of the New Testament. 

rHE Old Testament— that is, the 
Bible prior to the Advent — stood 
like a half-built temple, awaiting 
the coming of Christ to complete it. 

But he wrote no portion of the New 
Testament with his own hand. He 
committed that work to his disciples as 
a sacred trust and gave them an abun- 
dant equipment for it. Observe, 

(a) A considerable portion of his teach- 
ing was in merest outline. Some of the 
most important truths could, in the 
162 



The New Testament 163 

necessity of the case, be only hinted at. 
He said, " I have yet many things to say 
unto you, but ye cannot bear them now " 
(John xvi. 12). His use of parables is 
thus explained, " And with many such 
parables spake he the Word unto them, 
as they were able to hear it" (Mark iv. 
33). 

(b) He made provision that such 
teaching as must be presented thus by 
himself should subsequently be filled out. 
It must be remembered that Jesus did not 
profess to complete his system of truth. 
Luke says he only " began to teach " 
(Acts i. 1). His words were the substance 
of a revelation which was to be contin- 
ued, formulated and completed by cer- 
tain of his disciples, who were to write 
this further Scripture as they were moved 
by the Spirit of God. 

(c) To this end he specially endued 
them with the Spirit, and promised " He 
shall guide you into all the truth " (John 
xvi. 13) ; and again ; " He shall teach you 



164 The Scriptures 

all things, and bring to your remembrance 
all that I said unto you" (John xiv. 26), 
and again : " When the Comforter is 
come, whom I will send unto you from 
the Father, even the Spirit of truth, 
which proceedeth from the Father, he 
shall bear witness of me : and ye also shall 
bear witness, because ye have been with 
me from the beginning " (John xv. 26, 
27). The New Testament is simply the 
recorded testimony of these " witnesses." 
It consists of a fourfold biography of 
Christ, a brief history of the Apostolic 
Church, the formulation of Christ's 
doctrinal and ethical teachings in a series 
of apostolic epistles, and one book of 
prophecy. The canon of the New 
Testament, thus composed, has stood 
unchanged, issuing a challenge, as it were, 
to the passing centuries, " Supplement 
me if you can ! " 

(d) The exclusive bounds of the New 
Testament are indicated by Christ in his 
instruction and qualifications of the " wit- 



The New Testament 165 

nesses." Only such persons were to 
write as, having been auditors and eye- 
witnesses or companions of such, were 
specially qualified, commissioned and re- 
quired thus to do (as in Rev. i. 19) ; and 
only such writings could be included 
in the canon as were produced in this 
way. 

(e) And upon these writings our Lord 
placed the seal of divine authority in 
most explicit terms, saying, "He that 
heareth you, heareth me ; and he that 
rejecteth you rejecteth me ; and he that 
rejecteth me rejecteth him that sent me " 
(Luke x. 16). Here is food for reflection 
on the part of such as profess to find 
antagonism between the teachings of 
John or Paul or James and those of their 
divine Lord. It is simply fatuous for a 
professing Christian to say, " I accept 
the teachings of Christ but not those 
of his apostles/' when Christ himself 
said, with reference to their teach- 
ings, " He that heareth you, heareth 



1 66 The Scriptures 

me ; and he that rejecteth you rejecteth 
me. 

(/) If further proof of Christ's endorse- 
ment of the New Testament is desired, 
we shall find it in his last impressive 
words, " For I testify unto every man 
that heareth the words of the prophecy 
of this book, If any man shall add unto 
them, God shall add unto him the plagues 
which are written in this book : and if 
any man shall take away from the words 
of the book of this prophecy, God shall 
take away his part from the tree of life, 
and out of the holy city, which are writ- 
ten in this book " (Rev. xxii. 18, 19). It 
is not a matter of vital moment whether 
this solemn admonition refers to the en- 
tire volume of Scripture or only to the 
Book of the Revelation of St. John ; 
since in any case it indicates the mind of 
the Master respecting the inviolable sanc- 
tity of Holy Writ. If the words mean 
anything, they mean that the Book is 
not to be irreverently tampered with, 



The New Testament 167 

added to or subtracted from at pleasure, 
or treated in any wise except as a full and 
complete, inspired and authoritative rec- 
ord of the divine mind and will concern- 
ing men. 



CHAPTER V 

The Silence of Jesus as to Alleged 
Errors of the Scriptures. 

/T is a little thing to say of Jesus that he 
was an honest man. And yet there is 
much in that; for "an honest man's 
the noblest work of God." Moreover, 
there is nothing so rare. The rule among 
men is to wear masks and disguises. Not 
one of us would be willing to have a win- 
dow in his breast through which our 
neighbors might see the secret imagina- 
tions of our hearts. 

An honest man is a two-sided man; 
that is, his silence is as honest as his speech. 
168 



Alleged Errors 169 

It is customary in Siam to punish an in- 
corrigible falsifier by sewing up his lips. 
But the cure is inadequate ; for a lie may 
be told by the lifting of the eyebrows, or 
the pointing of a finger. It is possible 
" to convey a libel with a frown, or wink 
a reputation down." Indeed, a falsehood 
may be told by making no motion at all. 
A gossip comes to you with a scandalous 
story which you have reason to believe 
is false ; in common honesty you should 
make an indignant denial, but you utter 
not a word. Speak up, man ! Silence 
gives consent. Silence is a liar, a slan- 
derer, a forsworn enemy to friendship 
and truth and righteousness. 

Let us say, then, that Jesus, the divine 
Teacher, was absolutely honest. There 
was no guile on his lips ; there was no 
guile in his heart. His life was as trans- 
parent as his utterance ; his silence was 
as candid as his speech. 

There are those who insist upon hav- 
ing no creed save the teachings of Christ. 



170 The Scriptures 

If that statement may be accepted in its 
full significance, we shall not dissent from 
it. The teachings of our Lord had to 
do with all the great problems and veri- 
ties of the endless life. But when we 
speak of his teachings, we must be per- 
mitted to include his eloquent silence. 
For in many ways his silence was more 
significant than his words. He found 
his disciples in possession of certain views 
respecting truth, of which, had they been 
false, it was his simple duty as an honest 
Master to dispossess them. It is with this 
consideration in mind that we turn our 
attention now to his assurance, " If it 
were not so, I would have told you " 
(John xiv. 2). 

(1) With reference to himself. The 
world had been looking for the coming 
of Christ. This feeling of expectancy 
was universal, but the Jews in particular 
were on the qui vive. The coming of 
Messiah was spoken of as "The Consola- 
tion of Israel." They had been led by 



Alleged Errors 171 

their prophets from time immemorial to 
believe that in the fulness of time one 
would appear who should restore the 
glory of their nation. His nature and 
character were predicted in minute de- 
tail. This was "The Hope of Israel/' 
The disciples of Jesus as Jews shared in 
the common expectancy. In their famil- 
iar intercourse with Jesus, listening to his 
sermons and beholding his wonderful 
works, they came to believe that he was 
the long-expected Christ. Let it be ob- 
served, that he permitted them to enter- 
tain that view and uttered no word against 
it. 

At the beginning of his ministry he 
was announced by John the Baptist as 
the Lamb of God. The term had no 
significance whatever, except as it pro- 
nounced Jesus to be the antitype of all 
the sacrifices which the children of Israel 
had been wont to offer in expiation of 
their sins. John meant, if he meant any- 
thing, that Jesus was the Lamb of God 



172 The Scriptures 

slain from the. foundation of the world. 
It was so understood by the disciples, 
though with only a dim apprehension of 
the manner in which that intimation was 
to be ultimately fulfilled. And Jesus al- 
lowed his disciples to rest in that view of 
his office and work. 

As he was journeying through Caesarea- 
Philippi, he made inquiry of his disciples, 
"Who do men say that I am?" And 
when they answered, " Some say one 
thing, and some say another," he further 
inquired, " But who say ye that I am ?" 
Then Peter witnessed his good confes- 
sion, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God!" Not only did Jesus 
make no disavowal, but he distinctly 
consented in the words, " My Father 
which is in heaven hath revealed it unto 
thee." 

In the upper room he met his disciples 
after his resurrection, and bade doubting 
Thomas thrust his fingers into his wounds 
in evidence of his triumph over death. 



Alleged Errors 173 

Then the skeptical disciple fell before 
him, crying, " My Lord and my God ! " 
Had Jesus been less than very God of 
very God, he must, in common honesty, 
have said in that moment, like the 
angel in the Apocalypse, "See thou 
do it not." But he permitted this 
act of divine homage, and so by his 
silence distinctly avowed his equality 
with God. 

(2) With reference to. the Scriptures as the 
written Word. One of the stock argu- 
ments of the destructive critics is based 
on the silences of Scripture. For ex- 
ample, the absence of a particular name 
of God from certain portions of the record 
is taken to show that the writer was un- 
familiar with it. And the omission of 
certain words and expressions from the 
latter part of the book of Isaiah proves 
that Isaiah could not have composed it. 
So far as this argument is effective at all, 
it has a double edge ; as will be seen 
when it is applied to the singular silence 



174 The Scriptures 

of Jesus with respect to alleged errors in 
the Word of God. 

Is it not extraordinary that the wonder- 
ful Teacher never uttered a word or sylla- 
ble to indicate that he supposed that the 
Book was other than true from beginning 
to end ? How shall we account for this ? 
We are in a dilemma, facing a three-fold 
alternative. First: There are no such 
errors in Scriptures. Second: The errors 
are there, but Christ was not aware of 
them. Third: He was aware of these 
errors but did not choose to tell. 

Of course the destructive critics are 
bound to reject the first horn of this de- 
lemma. They insist not that there are 
occasional errors in the Bible but that it 
is honeycombed with them. There are 
hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands 
of them. Annals purporting to be his- 
toric are pronounced legendary or wholly 
fabulous ; prophecies are declared to be 
ex post facto ; entire books are con- 
demned as forgeries. And the errors in 



Alleged Errors 175 

question are not unimportant, but of a 
most vital character, touching every one 
of the great doctrines and ethical facts of 
our religion. In other words the destruc- 
tive criticism, when frankly stated, makes 
the Bible a mingled tissue of truth and 
falsehood with no means of discriminat- 
ing between them. So far from being 
"the best of books," if placed alongside 
of a hundred reputable works of science 
and history, it become.s the least trustwor- 
thy of them all. 

But if the first horn of the dilemma be 
impossible to a friend of the destructive 
criticism, the second is still more so, as- 
suming him to be a professed follower 
of Christ. Not long ago an essayist in a 
ministers' meeting enquired, " If the 
statements in the Pentateuch, to which 
Jesus referred, were not true, why did 
he not say so ? " to which one of his au- 
dience replied, " Because he did not know 
any better." That is to say, Christ was 
less familiar with the true significance of 



1 76 The Scriptures 

Scripture than the so-called Biblical ex- 
perts of our time. This, however, is in 
direct contravention of Christ's constant 
claim of infallible insight into truth ; as 
where he says, " I am the truth " (John 
xiv. 6) ; and, " To this end am I come 
into the world, that I should bear witness 
to the truth " (John xviii. 37). If, in- 
deed, with the assumption of omniscience 
on his lips, he really knew less of Scrip- 
ture than our modern professors of Bibli- 
cal science, we will probably agree that 
he is not competent to be our instructor 
in spiritual things. In that case, it would 
obviously be wiser for such as are in 
serious quest of truth to sit as disciples at 
the feet of those who profess to know 
more than he.* 

The third horn of the dilemma is all 
that remains ; namely, Christ was aware 
of these alleged errors, but did not choose 
to tell. Worse and worse ! The scholars 
who are exposing the alleged errors of 

* See Appendix D. 



Alleged Errors 177 

Scripture in our time profess to be do- 
ing so in the interest of truth and honesty. 
They say they are bound to attack " Bib- 
liolatry," which is superstition. They 
are constrained by conscience to unearth 
the truth at all hazards. But what of 
Jesus, then, who so strangely held his 
peace ? O that singular silence ! That 
eloquent silence of his ! What shall be 
said of it ? The Jews of his time had an 
implicit faith in their. Scriptures. They 
would not touch them with unwashen 
hands ; they weighed and measured the 
relative value of their words and sen- 
tences ; they wore them as frontlets be- 
tween their eyes. Here was Bibliolatry 
indeed ! Were they mistaken, and did 
Jesus know it? How easily he could 
have corrected their misapprehension. 
And still did he keep silence ? Then, I 
say, he is not competent to be our guide 
in righteousness ; for, evermore, " an 
honest man's the noblest work of God." 
The alternatives are before us. I see 



178 The Scriptures 

no logical position for a Christian to take 
but that the Scriptures are true. Out 
of the ministry of Jesus there comes a 
voice, solemn and conclusive, which de- 
termines our course in the midst of con- 
troversy : " Let not your heart be 
troubled : believe in God, believe also in 
me . . . if // were not so, I would have 
told you. ' ' 

The writer is aware that the argument 
at this point is negative. It should be 
observed, however, that this is the form 
of argument most emphasized by the 
destructive critics. Let it be remem- 
bered, too, that silence is oftentimes 
convincing where speech is ineffective. 
The most serious misrepresentations are 
not unfrequently made without a word. 
He who permits a falsehood to pass un- 
challenged enters into complicity with 
it. Honesty constrains us to speak out. 
So when Jesus, professing to be a teacher 
of truth, in an age when the Scriptures 
were challenged on every side as vigor- 



Alleged Errors 179 

ously as at the present day, refused to lend 
his influence by word or syllable to the ex- 
posure of alleged Biblical errors, we are 
justified in concluding that he believed 
there were no such errors. He found 
his disciples holding a certain view of 
Scripture of which, had it been errone- 
ous, he must in common honesty have 
dispossessed them. A word would have 
accomplished this, but the word was un- 
spoken. He left them resting in their 
simple faith, covering the case with those 
significant words, " If it were not so, I 
would have told you." 



CHAPTER VI 

Summary and Conclusion. 

rHE argument in Chapter First 
was to show a fourfold, progres- 
sive, Antecedent Presumption ; 
first, that God would reveal himself to his 
children in some way ; second, that this 
revelation would probably be in human 
form ; third, that such an Incarnation 
must be complemented by a Scriptural 
revelation, since it would be practically 
ineffective otherwise ; and fourth, that 
the Incarnate Word must be in complete 
harmony with the Written Word. 

In Chapter Second it was shown by the 
1 80 



Summary and Conclusion 181 

cumulative testimony of all Christ's ref- 
erences to Scripture that he was not 
only in perfect accord with it but that he 
positively, invariably and absolutely ap- 
proved its truth and trustworthiness 
every way. 

In Chapter Third the same fact was 
demonstrated by a more specific and clas- 
sified survey of his relations to the Written 
Word ; first, in his quotations from the 
current versions of his time ; second, in 
the various titles which he applied to it ; 
third, in his positive affirmations respect- 
ing its singular truth and complete trust- 
worthiness. 

In Chapter Fourth it was made to ap- 
pear that Jesus placed his anticipatory 
approval on writings which were to be 
made by certain of his inspired followers 
respecting his life and doctrine ; and that 
by this approval the New Testament has 
co-ordinate authority with the Old, as 
being equally true and trustworthy. 

And in Chapter Fifth emphasis was 



1 82 The Scriptures 

placed on the eloquent silence of Jesus 
respecting the alleged errors of Holy 
Writ ; showing that, had there been 
such imperfection he must have known 
it, and, knowing, must have declared it ; 
leading us to the inevitable conclusion 
that, in his judgment, the Scriptures 
were worthy of absolute credence as the 
perfect Word of God. 

It remains, in conclusion, to consider 
the question Do Christ and the Bible stand 
or fall together ? To that question we 
unhesitatingly answer No. There is, in 
fact, no question as to Christ's or the 
Bible's standing or falling, apart or to- 
gether. Neither can fall under any cir- 
cumstances. They stand. They stand 
together as the mutually complementary, 
reflexively corroborative and equally 
trustworthy Incarnate and Written 
Words of God. And they stand forever, 
" for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken 



it." 



Were Christ shown to be other than 



Summary and Conclusion 183 

the veritable Son of God, the Bible would 
be proven a tissue of falsehoods from be- 
ginning to end, because it continually 
testifies of him ; but no contingency is 
more remote than this. Conversely, were 
the Bible shown to be other than com- 
pletely true and trustworthy it would be 
impossible, in view of the consistent teach- 
ing of Jesus respecting its truth, to be- 
lieve in him as a teacher come from God ; 
but this contingency is as remote as the 
other. There have never been wanting 
— nor are there wanting in our time — 
men who from within as well as from 
without the church have denied both the 
Godhood of Christ and the divine verac- 
ity of the Scriptures ; but the Church as 
a compact whole was never truer to the 
Incarnate Word and to the Written Word 
than it is at this day. 

The doctrines of the Incarnation of 
Christ and the Inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures are like the pillars Jachin and Boaz, 
which upheld the archway of the temple. 



184 The Scriptures 

They are complementary each to the 
other. There is no Christ except the 
Christ of the Scriptures ; and there is no 
possibility of any assurance respecting 
Christ unless we are warranted in placing 
an unqualified trust in the testimony of 
those Scriptures as the very Word of 
God. 

There are two that bear witness to the 
divineness of the Bible. One of these is 
the Bible itself. Not only its oft repeated 
claim, but its very existence, is evidence of 
its singular origin and character. The 
book is a record of miracles, but it records 
no miracle more amazing than itself. It 
has passed through the fire of centuries 
without the smell of smoke upon it. 
Other books, however wise and wonder- 
ful in their time, yield to criticism or fall 
behind in the progress of the ages. Our 
libraries are cemeteries. Here are three 
epitaphs which are at first sight scarcely 
recognized — " Novum Organum," " Hy- 
driotaphia," " Eikonoklastes. " Who 



Summary and Conclusion 185 

cares for them now? Yet Novum Or- 
ganum, by Lord Bacon, formulated the 
inductive system of philosophy. Hydri- 
otaphia, by Sir Thomas Browne, was a 
thesaurus of general information such as 
the world has seldom seen. And Eikono- 
klastes, by John Milton, was the historic 
manifesto against the divine right of kings. 
Thus the great books die, but one lives ! — 
lives in spite of opposition and the rasure 
of time — lives gloriously and is destined 
to survive all. 

It is printed in about five hundred lan- 
guages and dialects. The interest which 
it excites in the universal mind, and by 
which it is separated infinitely from all 
books of human origin, is attested by the 
fact that within forty-eight hours after the 
Oxford version was issued two million 
five hundred thousand copies were dis- 
posed of. The telegraphic wires were 
kept busy, to the exclusion of every- 
thing else, transmitting the four Gospels 
from New York to Chicago in a tele- 



1 86 The Scriptures 

gram of more, than one hundred thou- 
sand words ! 

And what shall be said as to the meta- 
physical force in this volume — a force 
that grips hold of the sinner and some- 
how transforms him, changes his heart, 
conscience, brain, and will, and makes 
him a new man? The Chancellor of 
Queen Candace was converted by read- 
ing the Fifty-third chapter of Isaiah ; 
some centuries later Lord Rochester, a 
vicious infidel, was converted by reading 
the same. And this sort of thing is go- 
ing on all the time. Has any other book 
such power ? Do the Vedas, the Zend- 
Avesta, the Koran, the Analects of Con- 
fucius turn men about, reform them, 
transform them, and set their faces to- 
wards truth and righteousness and heaven 
and God ? An old Highlander said to 
Claudius Buchanan, " I cannot argue, I 
cannot present any theological facts or 
reasons, I cannot explain the process or 
philosophy of revelation ; but I know 



Summary and Conclusion 187 

this, that when I was a man with an un- 
governable temper and an evil character, 
this Book got hold of me and quelled 
the tiger in me." Ah, here is the mas- 
ter fact : the Bible makes men ! Take 
your stand on a Broadway corner and 
select a hundred at random from among 
the passers-by who say that they believe 
in these Scriptures, and another hundred 
from those who reject them ; let the two 
companies face each other ; and contrast 
their characters. We will abide the issue. 
The best men of the world to-day are, 
as a rule, conspicuously and undeniably 
those who believe in the Word of 
God. 

Or take a map of the world and draw 
a line around the nations that have fallen 
under the influence of this Book : and, 
behold, you have included all light and 
excluded all regions that lie in darkness 
and the shadow of death ! You have 
drawn a line between barbarism and 
civilization, between charity and selfish- 



1 88 The Scriptures 

ness, between oppression and freedom, 
between night and day ! 

The Bible is the only book in existence 
that boldly and conclusively touches the 
great spiritual problems. It is the only 
book that makes a distinct utterance with 
reference to the nature and character of 
God, and to the nature and character and 
destiny of man. It not only sets forth 
the great moral and spiritual truths, but 
it so simplifies them as to bring them 
within the grasp of the humble folk : 
as it is written, " Except ye become as 
little children ye shall in no wise see the 
kingdom of God." And a curious fact 
is this : the truths thus presented are 
capable of codification. No one ever 
heard of a doctrinal system belonging to 
Islam or Confucianism or to any re- 
ligion except ours. There is a system of 
truths represented in the oecumenical 
creeds of Christendom which is substan- 
tially — nay, absolutely — identical among 
all the multitudinous families of the 



Summary and Conclusion 189 

church militant. These truths are strung 
together in logical and coherent order, 
as if intended to furnish thus a necklace 
of pearls for the adornment of the Bride 
of God. 

The Bible presents, also, the moral 
standards of the world. The courtesies, 
proprieties, humanities of our civil, social 
and domestic life are traced to the Ser- 
mon on the Mount. The jurisprudence 
of every civilized people on the globe is 
based upon the Decalogue. The Dec- 
alogue and the Sermon on the Mount 
are the two brief historic summaries of 
Scriptural morality, and between them 
stands Jesus Christ, the exemplar of both 
of these symbols, the only Man who ever 
" brought the bottom of his life up to 
the top of his light," the perfect, the 
Ideal Man. 

But the crowning testimony of the 
Bible to its own divineness is its power 
unto salvation. Of all the books in the 
world this is the only one that answers 



190 The Scriptures 

the universal question " What shall I do 
to be saved ? " There are others that 
with more or less correctness, set forth 
the precepts of right living ; but there is 
none that suggests a way of blotting out 
the record of the misspent past or of es- 
caping from the penalty of the broken 
law. All through this Book, from Eden 
to the Apocalyptic vision, walks the ma- 
jestic figure of one who claims to be the 
deliverer of the soul. In the midst of 
these oracles stands the Cross, throwing 
its shadow four ways towards all the 
horizons of human life. Out of this 
blessed volume comes the voice, always 
and everywhere, " He that believeth on 
the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved"— 
saved here and hereafter, saved from the 
shame and bondage and penalty of sin. 

Other books have poems, but no other 
sings the songs of salvation and gives the 
troubled soul a peace that floweth like a 
river. Other books have eloquence, but 
no other enables us to behold God him- 



Summary and Conclusion 191 

self stretching out his pierced hands and 
pleading with men to turn and live. 
Other books have history, but no other 
tells the story of divine love reaching 
from the remote councils of eternity to 
the consummation on Calvary, " the old, 
old story of Jesus and his love." Other 
books have science, but no other can 
give the soul a definite assurance with 
respect to spiritual life, so that it may say, 
" I know him whom. I have believed and 
am persuaded that he is able to guard 
that which I have committed unto him 
against that day." Other books set forth 
philosophy, but no other makes us wise 
with respect to those great doctrines 
which centre in the living God. 

Thus the Book bears witness to itself. 
Add to this the testimony of Jesus as trav- 
ersed in the foregoing chapters — the 
positive testimony of his consistent affir- 
mations, not infrequently sealed with a 
solemn "Verily, verily I say unto you," 
— his negative testimony in the eloquent 



192 The Scriptures 

silence which he observed with reference 
to all those alleged errors which are so 
magnified and emphasized by the de- 
structive critics of our time — and what 
standing ground is left for hesitation on 
the part of any true child of God ? 

Aye, the Written Word and the In- 
carnate Word stand together ! Neither 
can fall ; but a man will fall from either 
when he lets go the other. 

Blessed Bible ! Old-fashioned but not 
obsolete ; deep beyond the plummet of 
philosophy, yet clear enough to reveal 
thy deepest treasures to children's eyes ; 
sharp as a Damascus blade to pierce a 
guilty conscience, but comforting as 
balm of Gilead to the wounds of the 
penitent ; fierce as the lightning against all 
wrong and error, but gentle as a mother's 
touch in time of trouble ! Dear Book 
that our fathers and mothers touched 
with reverent hands and pressed with lov- 
ing lips, thou shalt be the man of our 
counsel also, a lamp unto our feet and a 



Summary and Conclusion 193 

light unto our way ! In sorrow we will 
find thy solace through our tears ; in 
weariness we will drink from thy crystal 
depths as soldiers at a wayside fountain ; 
in weakness we will gird our loins with 
thine exceeding great and precious prom- 
ises ; and in our last journey thy living 
Word shall be our rod and staff to lean 
upon until we come to heaven's gate ! 

M 



APPENDICES 



It is conceded that the doctrine of the incarnation is supra- 
rational. The most veritable facts in human life and experi- 
ence are not infrequently beyond the necessity, not to say the 
possibility, of argument. We thank no man for tearing apart 
the leaves and petals of a rose to help our appreciation of it. 
It would be a useless task to dissect the vocal apparatus of a 
skylark ; let me see it soaring through the ether and hear its 
matchless song ! I watch the sun go down in golden glory ; 
and a discourse on the refraction of light just then would be 
an impertinence. O man of science, be still and let me drink 
this beauty in 1 Or who shall argue as to a mother's love ? 
Who shall estimate it by a mathematical computation of the 
number of kisses imprinted on an infant's cheek? So with 
this doctrine of the incarnation ; you cannot reduce it to a 
full scientific fact. Before you reach your quod erat demon- 
strandum, the life and glory have departed. Let this suffice. 
God is manifest in flesh. Let me bow and silently behold 
him. There is a magnetism in the presence of Christ, a light 
in his eyes, a warmth in his hands, a life out of his death, that 
forces me to cry like the centurion beneath his cross, " Verily, 
this is the Son of God I " 

But the doctrine of the incarnation, though it transcends 
reason, is not contra-rational. It is a mystery. It is above, 
but not against, reason. It lies distinctly in the province of 
faith. The man who makes the assertion that no fact is to be 
received which cannot be apprehended by the senses, is in 
deep water ; for we live and move and have our being in a 
realm of mystery. I will agree to explain the dual nature of 
Christ if any one will explain to me the dual nature of man. 
I am flesh and spirit ; no scientist in the world can elucidate 



195 



196 Appendices 

the connection and co-operation of these two. I lift my hand. 
What does that mean ? The power of mind over matter. 
My reason spoke to my will, my will commanded a sinew; 
and, behold, it was done I Thus spirit and flesh co-operate ; 
my dual personality is a fact ; no philosopher can explain it ; 
none can deny it. 

B 

If it be conceded that an incarnation of Deity is not im- 
probable, the question arises, Which of the many alleged in- 
carnations in the religions of the centuries is the true one ? 
And this is a question of intrinsic comparison. 

Take Osiris, who was alleged by the Egyptians to have 
come down from heaven and " conferred many incalculable 
benefits upon men." He was murdered by his enemy, Typhon, 
who cut his body in pieces and threw it into the Nile. His 
faithful wife Isis with many tears sought these fragments, and 
when they were placed together, lo ! Osiris was alive again ; 
and he liveth for evermore, enthroned in the judgment-hall of 
the invisible world. This has been justly pronounced " a won- 
derful f oref eeling of the gospel narrative " — an outline, though 
dim, of the incarnation, life, suffering, vicarious death, resur- 
rection and exaltation of Jesus the Christ. But history has 
disposed of the claims of Osiris. He lies, like his mummied 
devotees, 

11 Cased in cedar and shut in sacred gloom, 
Swathed in linen and precious unguents old, 
Painted with cinnebar and rich with gold, 
Resting in solemn salvatory, 

Sealed from the moth and the owl and the flittermouse 
With his name on his brow." 

The ancient Persians were wont to speak of Sosioch as the 
Coming One who would put down the black Ahriman and 
usher in the golden age. But they waited in vain. He never 
came ! 

The modern Parsees reject all thought of a Saviour. " There 
is no salvation," they say. " A man must suffer the penalty 
of whatsoever evil he hath done. The only saviour is a vir- 
tuous life." It was certain of their number, however, who, 



Appendices 197 

made heartsick by hope deferred, followed the star to Bethle- 
hem and paid their tribute to the veritable Son of God. 

In the religion of the Hindus there are many avatars ; but 
among them all Igni, or Brahma, is regarded as distinctly the 
incarnation of the divine essence. The portrayal of his char- 
acter, as given in the Vedas, is a sufficient answer to his 
claims. 

In the Buddhist conception of Gautama we have an apothe- 
osis of man rather than a divine incarnation. The central 
thought of the system is human deification by self-culture. It 
appears that Gautama was a rationalist, since his last appeal 
was made to the human intellect. He was also a pantheist, 
inasmuch as he taught that the universal mind is everything 
and all. And he was practically an atheist, because he af- 
firmed that aside from the impersonal Adi-Buddha there is no 
God. 

In the Mythology of the Greeks there was no incarnation, 
but, instead, a singularly beautiful though futile deification of 
Nature in its multitudinous forms. If we enter their Pan- 
theon we shall find Nature enthroned, the four elements dei- 
fied, and sacrifices laid upon the altars of Storm and Season 
and Fruitful ness. 

In the Mohammedan religion the possibility of an incarna- 
tion is denied in these words from the Koran : 



" Say there is one God alone ? 
God the eternal, 

He begetteth not, is not begotten, 
And there is none like unto him." 

But this denial, emphasized by the historic enmity of Islam 
toward Christianity, is itself a recognition of the universal 
thought; while its avowed fatalism, as formulated in Karma, 
" the doctrine of consequences," is a confession of the ulti- 
mate impotence of a religion possessing a book without a 
Christ to complement it. The fatal defect of Islam is expressed 
by Lord Houghton in these w T ords : 

" Mohammed's truth lay in a holy book ; 
Christ's in a sacred life. 



198 Appendices 



" So while the world rolls on from change to change, 
And realms of thought expand, 
The latter stands without expanse or range, 
Stiff as a dead man's hand. 

* While, as the life-blood fills the growing form, 
The spirit Christ has shed 
Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm, 
More felt than heard or read." 

It thus appears that the false religions pay tribute to the 
importance of an incarnation, however vaguely and imper- 
fectly they may realize it. 

It is not for us to say whether such anticipations of a great 
Deliverer are lingering echoes of the protevangel (Gen. hi. 
15), or the expressions of an intuitive conviction that a good 
God will not leave a sin-stricken world to an irremediable 
doom; in any case, we rejoice to know that even the nations 
that lie in darkness and the shadow of death are not wholly 
without a longing after God. They have slender clues of gos- 
pel truth, which, were they followed, would lead bewildered 
souls out of the dark labyrinths into the light. Thus, God is 
exonerated and the nations are without excuse (Rom. i. 20), 
if, becoming vain in their imaginations, they choose the un- 
broken night rather than the endless day. 



The errors referred to — which are frequently made to appear 
much more numerous and important than they really are — may 
be grouped as follows : 

(1) Such as might naturally be expected in the process of 
transcription. It would be supposed that numberless errors 
would have occurred in this manner. But they are in fact so 
comparatively few and have so little bearing on the important 
truths of Scripture as to warrant the belief that even copyists 
and translators have been under the care of a special provi- 
dence. 

(2) It is averred that there are statements in Scripture 
which conflict with science. This is denied in toto, and by 
none more vigorously than by many scientists of established 



Appendices 199 

name. It is conceded that the Scriptures account for the 
present order of things in a manner not altogether harmonious 
with certain so-called " scientific " hypotheses of these times ; 
but there is an infinite chasm between a hypothesis and a sci- 
entific fact ; and it is likely to be a long while before an un- 
substantiated dream can be successfully pitted against an 
authority which has withstood the test of centuries as the 
Word of God. 

(3) There are said to be statements in Scripture which are 
mutually contradictory. This also is denied, absolutely, ex- 
cept in the case of literal Or numerical discrepancies of little 
or no importance, and due wholly to transcription. On the 
other hand, the wonderful harmony of the Scriptures — com- 
posed by above forty writers at intervals along a period of 
sixteen hundred years — affords a most striking proof of di- 
vine superintendence. 

(4) There are variations of expression in the sacred record, 
frequently called " discrepancies," which on closer examina- 
tion are seen to present the truth "from various points of view. 
Such are the differences in the four Gospels. If I were desir- 
ous of forming an accurate conception of the personal appear- 
ance of the German Emperor, I could not do better than to 
send to Berlin for photographs as follows : A right profile, a 
left profile, a half front and a full face. This is precisely what 
the four evangelists have given us in their biographies of 
Jesus: three portraits from diverse standpoints, and one "full 
front " in which he appears as the eternal Son of God. The 
differences of expression in these four Gospels — allowing scope 
for the exercise of the writers' individual traits — afford us a 
satisfactory means of forming a full and clear judgment as to 
the life and character of Jesus Christ. 



D 

How do those who, while professing to be Christians, deny 
the truth of Scripture, escape from this dilemma ? By intro- 
ducing a peculiar theory of the " Kenosis " or self-emptying of 
Christ. The suggestion is in Phil. ii. 5-1 1 : " Have this mind 
in you, which was also in Jesus Christ : who, existing in the 
form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God 
a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of 



200 Appendices 



a servant, being made in the likeness of men ; and being found 
in fashion as a man, he' humbled himself, becoming obedient 
even unto death, yea, the death of the cross." 

Now what was it that the only-begotten Son of God gave 
up when he " took upon him the form of a servant and was 
made in the likeness of men ? " His Godhood ? No ; but 
the " form " of it. His essential glory ? No ; but the 
" form " of it. 

It must have been a great day in heaven when the Second 
Person of the Godhead set out for earth to accomplish his 
great work. He vanished ; and when next he appeared, lo ! 
it was as a child wrapped in swaddling bands and lying in a 
manger. Between the gate of heaven and Bethlehem, some- 
thing had fallen from him. Not his Godhood ; it is un- 
thinkable that he should cease to be God. But he had given 
up the outward form of deity. There was no halo about the 
Christ-child. " There was no form, nor comeliness, nor any 
beauty that we should desire him." He had emptied himself 
of the form of God, and taken upon him the form- of a man. 
He was exclusively neither God nor man ; but Theanihropos, 
the God-man. 

He was made in this "fashion" for a threefold purpose: 
(i) To enter so into participation of our human nature that 
he might become a high priest able to be touched with a feel- 
ing of our infirmities ; (2) to veil in such wise the divine 
majesty, upon which no man can look and live, as to adjust it 
to our fleshly eyes ; and (3) to prepare himself for the great 
sacrifice. As Anselm says, " He must be man that he may 
suffer, and by the same token he must be God, that he may 
suffer enough for all the children of men. 1 ' 

Let it be remembered, however, that in emptying himself of 
the form, he still retained the essential nature of God. Now 
and then his disciples caught a glimpse of its glory. On the 
Mount of Transfiguration in the shadow of the luminous 
cloud, his garments were white and glistering, and his face as 
the sun shining in its strength. 

In like manner he emptied himself of the outward form and 
exercise of his divine attributes. In becoming a servant, he 
held these prerogatives in abeyance. But they were always at 
his command, standing about him like genii awaiting his nod 
and beck. Where was his omnipresence? He whom the 
heaven of heavens could not contain, consented to be en- 



Appendices 201 



closed within the narrow bounds of a manger, a carpenter- 
shop, a judgment-hall. Yet on occasion barred doors and 
gates could not restrain him. And his consciousness of om- 
nipresence was manifest in his promise, " Lo, I am with you 
alway." 

Where was his omniscience ? In speaking of the Great As- 
size, he said, " But of the day and hour knoweth no man, no, 
not the Son, but the Father only." In other words, he had 
put away the exercise of his omniscience. Yet on occasion 
he recalled it ; as when he perceived past and future events, 
and declared his acquaintance with the secret imaginations of 
the hearts of men. All things were naked and open before 
him. There was indeed an obscuration, but in no wise an ob- 
literation, of his power of infinite sight. He was the great 
mind-reader. He needed no cathode rays to help him. 

And where was his omnipotence ? He who created the 
worlds consented to earn his livelihood in a carpenter-shop. 
He was anhungered and athirst, like other men ; he lay asleep 
on the steersman's cushion of the little boat, wearied with the 
labors of the day ; but mark, when the storm rises, and the 
sailors bend over him, crying, " Master, carest thou not that 
we perish ? " how he summons his almighty power, lifts his 
hands above the surging waves, and quiets them by his word, 
" Be still 1 " until, like naughty children, the winds and bil- 
lows sob themselves to sleep. 

But in his death this M self-emptying " went further still. 
" He became obedient unto death" The self-existent One, 
centre and source of life itself, bowed to the king of terrors, 
yet still remained Prince of life. When Peter drew the sword 
in Gethsemane Jesus rebuked him, saying, " Thinkest thou 
that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shall even now send 
me more than twelve legions of angels ? " In other words, if 
he consented to die, it was not because he had not the power 
to live. " I have power to lay down my life," said he, " and 
I have power to take it again." So when Pilate said, " Know- 
est thou not that I have power to release thee and have power 
to crucify thee ? " he answered, " Thou wouldest have no 
power against me, except it were given thee from above." 
He was not a struggling victim like Iphigeneia, the daughter 
of Agamemnon, who was dragged to the altar for the deliver- 
ance of the Greeks. He came to Calvary as a volunteer, 
saying, u Here am I, in the volume of the book it is written 



202 Appendices 

of me, I rejoice to do thy will, O my God." He addressed 
himself to his great purpose in pursuance of an eternal cove- 
nant for the salvation of ruined men. In full possession of 
infinite power, he chose to be feeble like other men. 

It is evident from the foregoing that no just or Scriptural 
interpretation of the Kenosis can give any warrant whatsoever 
for the astounding assertion that Jesus was ignorant of the 
facts in the controversy as to the truth of Scripture. He did, 
indeed, " lay his glory by " when he assumed our flesh ; but 
it was precisely as a king puts aside his crown and scepter and 
purple robe. He does not lay them beyond his reach. He 
does not discard his royal functions or responsibilities. He 
does not abdicate when he " lays them by." On occasion he 
instantly reassumes them ; so that even when discrowned and 
disrobed, he is still a king, supreme and regnant, with all his 
essential honors thick upon him. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Abreast of the age, The Bible, 99. 

Affirmations of Jesus as to Truth of Scripture, 121, seq. 
Agreement of the Incarnate and the Written Word, 15. 
Attitude of Jesus toward the Scriptures, 18, seq. 
Authority of Jesus, 39. 

ultimate for Christians, preface, 103, 104. 
Autograph, original, of the Scriptures, 91-94. 

B 

Baptism of Jesus, 28-30. 
Baptist, John the, 47-49. 
Bibliolatry, 45, 46. 
Brugsch, Herr, discoveries of, 98. 



Cain and Abel, 141. 

Caesarea-Philippi, journey through, 56, seq. 

Capernaum, Christ at, 39. 

Christ and the Bible, mutually complementary, 183, 184. 

Christendom testifies to Truth and Power of Scriptures, 14, 

187, 188. 
Consciousness, testimony of, 7. 
"Contains," the mischief of the word, 126, 127. 
Creation, story of, approved by Christ, 140. 

order of, 96, footnote. 
Credentials, Christ's, 49, 63, 71-73, 82, 8^ 
Critic, Jesus not a, 94, seq. 

203 



204 Index of Subjects 



Criticism, Lower, 95, 99, 100. 

Higher, 100-103. 
Cross, Christ on the, 84. 



Danger, the Bible in no, 139. 

of losing confidence in the Bible, 139. 
Definition, importance of, 138. 
Deuteronomy, references of Christ to, 147, 148. 
Dilemma of the destructive critics, 174, seq. 
Disciples, qualified to write Scripture, 162-167. 
Disciples called, 32, ^ 

Discredited parts of Scripture approved by Christ, 14, seq. 
Dives and his brothers, 154-157. 
Divorce, 69. 

Doctors, Christ among the, 23-26. 
Doctrines, system of, in the Bible, 188, 189. 



Elijah, coming of, 58, 59. 

Emmaus, journey to, 85, 86. 

Errors in current versions, 89. 

Events, Scripture tested by, 13. 

Exodus, the, 143, 144. 

Experts, Biblical, an advisory board proposed, 124, 125. 

Explaining away the statements of Jesus, 121. 



F 

Fables, not to be used in verifying facts, 152, 153. 
Father, relation of Christ to the, 62. 
Feast of Dedication, Jesus at the, 63. 
Fire, the Scriptures under, 12-15. 
Flood, story of the, 141. 



Gethsemane, 82. 

Greeks, the, who asked to " see Jesus," 71, 72. 



Index of Subjects 205 



H 

Home, instruction of Jesus at, 19, 20. 
Honesty of Jesus, 168, 169, 176, 177. 
Hope of Israel, 170, 171. 
Householder, parable of the, 51, 52. 



Inauguration of Christ into his ministry, 27, 28. 
Incarnation, antecedent probability of an, 4. 

a universal thought, 5. 

a mystery, 7. 

woven into the Scriptures, 7. 
Inspiration of the Scriptures affirmed by Christ, 128-135. 

defined by him, 1 29, 1 30. 

J 
Jonah, the story of, approved by Christ, 149-153. 



Kenosis, the, 27, footnote. Appendix D. 

Key of knowledge, 66. 

Kingdom, patent factor in the, 158. 

Knowledge of the Scriptures, Chrises, 59, 60, 175, 176. 



Lamb of God, 31, 32, 171. 

Law, the, 115, seq. 

Law of Moses, 119, 120. 

Law and Prophets, 118. 

Law, Prophets and Hagiographa, 11 5-1 17, 

Lawyer, a certain, 65. 

Leaders, Christ and the religious, 65-69, 75~79> l0 S* 

Letter from Home, the Scriptures a, 11. 

Literature, the Bible as, 96, 134, 135. 

Loaves, Christ's teaching in connection with the, 53. 

Lot's wife, 143. 



206 Index of Subjects 

M 

Ministry, the Galilean, 35-55. 

the Judean, 33-35. 

the Perean, 55-71. 
Miracle, the Bible its own best, 184, 185. 
Mission, consciousness of Christ as to his, 26, 27. 
Morality of the Scriptures, 189. 
Moses and the Prophets, 156, 157. 

N 

Nature, vain search for God in, 5. 
Nazareth, Christ's sermon at, 36-38. 
New Testament, Christ's provision for, 162, seq. 
truth and authority of, 165-167. 
Nicodemus, Christ's interview with, 34. 



Objections to Scripture, anticipated by Christ, 153. 
Old Testament, origin of the title, 104. 

P 

Parables, 50. 

Palm Sunday, 71. 

Paralytic of Bethesda, 41. 

Passion week, Christ's preaching during, 71-85. 

Philosophy, vain search for God in, 6. 

Power of the Scriptures, 186. 

Patriarchs, historicity of the, 142. 

Pentateuch, the, 116, seq. 

its authority, 146. 
its truth affirmed, 144, 145. 
Prayer, Christ's sacerdotal, 81, 106, 107, no. 
Preaching of Jesus, Scriptural, 38, seq. 
of the Disciples, 64. 
for our time, 45-47, 1 59-161. 
Prejudice in favor of the Scriptures, 102. 
Probability, antecedent, of an incarnation, 4. 
of a Scripture, 9. 
of their mutual agreement, 15. 
Propagation of the Scriptures, 185, 186. 



Index of Subjects 207 



R 

Revelation of God, Bible the only, 12. 
Rule of faith and conduct, Christ's, 28-30. 
Ruler, a certain, 70. 



Sabbath, Christ's teaching as to the, 43, 44. 

Salvation, through the Scriptures, 68-70, 97, footnote, 135, 

139, 153, 186, 187, 139-192. 
Scripture, antecedent probability of a, 9. 
meaning of the title, 108, seq. 
School, Jesus at, 20. 
" Search the Scriptures," 134-137. 
Sermon on the Mount, 44, 45. 
Silence of Christ, argument from the, 168-179. 

as to himself, 170-173. 

as to Scripture, 173-179. 
Sinners, Christ the friend of, 52. 
Sodom, destruction of, 143, 
Sower, parable of the, 49, 50, 105, 158-160. 
Supper, the Lord's, 80. 

Stand or fall together, Christ and the Bible, 182, seq., 192. 
Summary of the argument, 180, seq. 



Teachers, Christ's denunciation of false, 41-43. 
Temple, first purging of the, 33. 

second purging of the, 73. 
Temptation of Jesus, 30, 31. 

Testimony of the Bible as to its own truth, 1 84-1 91. 
Testimony of Christ as to the truth of the Bible, 191, 192. 
Theology of the Scriptures, 97, footnote. 
Titles of the Bible, 103, seq. 
Traditional view of Inerrancy, 93. 
Traditions of the Elders, 54, 55. 
Transfiguration, the, 57, 58. 

Truth of Scripture denied by the destructive critics, 174, 175. 
Truth of Scripture af&rmed by Christ, 41, 85, 122, seq. 



208 Index of Subjects 

u 

Unbelief, no excuse for, 157. 



Versions, current, Christ's use of, 87, seq. 

substantial correctness of, 90. 

W 

Water, the living, 60, 61. 

Woman of Samaria, Christ's interview with the, 35. 

Woman taken in adultery, the, 61. 

Word, the Written and the Incarnate, 15-17. 

their agreement, 15. 
Word of God, the Scriptures so designated, 104, seq. 
Worthless Bible, a, 126, 127, 



INDEX OF TEXTS 



Genesis ii. 7 




131 


Zechariah xiii. 7 


8 


Exodus xxiv. 4 




28 


Matthew ii. 5-10 
iii. 13-17 


112 

28 


Numbers xxviii. 9 




116 


iv. 1-1 1 
v. 17, 18 


147 

147 


Deuteronomy vi. 13, 


16 


148 


17-19 


45 


viii. 3 




148 


vii. 12 
viii. 11 


118 
142 


Psalm xxii. 1 




84 


ix. 13 


52 


xxxv. 19 


80, 


"5 


ad. 7-1 S 


49 


xli. 9 


80, 


109 


10 


112 


lxix. 4 




US 


13 


119 


lxxxi. 6 




"5 


20-22 


148 


ex. 77 


► 132, 


*33 


xii. 5 


116 


cxviii. 22 




109 


5-7 


43 


exxi. 19 


80, 


ii5 


9-14 
38-40 


44 
49, 150 


Proverbs viii. 23 




99 


4i 


149 








42 


49 


Isaiah xii. 3 




no 


xiii. 1-19 


158 


xliv. 3 




no 


14, 15 


50 


lv. 1 




no 


19-21 


105 


lv. 10-13 




160 


37, $h 5 2 


51 


lxi. 1-3 




109 


xv. 2, 3 


54 

55 


Ezekiel xxxvii. 9 




132 


xvii. 10-13 
xviii. 52 


59 
i59 


Hosea vi. 6 




52 


xix. 4 


140 








4 -i 


70 


Micah iv. 2 




S3 


7 


113 



N 



209 



2io Index of Texts 



Matthew xix 7, 8 




146 


Luke iv 21 


109 


xxi. 13 


73, 


112 


25, 26, 27 


148 


16 




7i 


v. 14 


47 


42 




73 


viii. 11 


158 


xxii. 29-33 




in 


x. 16 


165 


31,32 




142 


23*24 


64 


37-40 


76, 


120 


25-28 


116 


a 42-46 




77 


26 


xxiii. 2 




146 


xi. 27, 28 


5o 


23 




116 


28 


10 A 


. 35 




141 


45,52 


66 


xxiv. 14 




159 


xii. 11, 12 


133 


IS 


79, 


149 


xvi. 15 


67 


37-39 




142 


16, 17 


68 


38,39 




80 


17 


116 


xxvi. 24 


80, 


114 


29,31 


146 


3i 


80, 


114 


.. 3 o 


69, 154 


52-54 


82 


114 


xvu. 28, 29, 32 


143 


55,56 




112 


xx. 28 

37,38 


113 
144 


Mark i. 21, 22 




39 


xxi. 22 


79> J 49 


ii. 1, 2 




47 


24 


79 


iv. 14, 17 




105 


xxii. 15, 16 


144 


33 




163 


37 


81 


vi. 2 




38 


42 


82 


vii. 6 




113 


67-71 


83 


9 




135 


xxiv. 25, 26 


, 85 


13 




105 


27 


146, 149 


viii. 31 




56 


44 


120 


ix. 12, 13 


59 


113 






x. 3 




146 


John i. 1, 14 


16 


4 




"3 


ii. 13-22 


34 


xii. 10 




109 


iii. 1-21 


34 


18-23 




158 


14 


144 


19 




"3 


iv. 1-42 


35 


19-23 




74 


v. 1 


41 


24-27 




75 


3 6 -47 


43 


3 * 




129 


38 


105 


xiv. 48, 49 




82 


39110,125, 
vi. 45 


135, 149 
53>"3 


Luke ii. 41-50 




23 


47-51 


54 


iv. 18, 19 




37 


49 


144 





Index 


f 1 exts 


211 


John vii. 10 


119 


Acts i. 1 


163 


. I5»i8 


60 






16 


39 


Romans 




i9» 23 


146 


iii. 1-2 


158 


19,24 


60 






23 


120 


II Corinthians 




37,38 


61 


iii. 14,15 


104 


38 


no 






viii. 2-1 1 


62 


Ephesians 




17,18 


114, 115 


vi. 17 


31 


56,58 


• 143 






x. 25 


106 


Phillipians 




34 


114,115 


ii. 5-1 1 


27, 199 


34-36 


63 






.. 35 r 


no 


II Timothy 




xu. 35, 36 


72 


iii. 16, 17 


130 


xiii. 18 


80, 109 






xiv. 2 


170 


Hebrews 




6 


176 


iv. 12 


i59 


26 


164 






xv. 24, 25 


106 


II Peter 




25 


80, 114, 115 


i. 21 


132 


26, 27 


164 






xvi. 12, 13 


163 


I John 




xvii. 6 


107 


iv. 2 


9 


12 


no 






14 


81, 107 


Revelation 




17 


81, 107, 122 


i. 19 


165 


xviii. 37 


5, 84, 176 


xxii. 18, 19 


166 



The Teaching of "Jesus Concerning His 
Own Mission 

BY 

Frank Hugh Foster, Ph.D., D.D. 
PRESS NOTICES. 

11 The style is clear, the thought elevated, the topics treated of are, 
in their logical deductions, extremely practical. Students of the Bible 
generally will find this a very useful volume to peruse and possess. 1 ' 
N. T. Observer. 

11 If this first volume of this series is a fair specimen and representative 
of those that will follow, the series will not lack in ability or interest. 
Dr. Foster's position is that of the conservative scholar who neverthe- 
less is familiar with current critical investigations. The style of presen- 
tation is clear and admirably adapted to the needs of the layman and the 
student." The Interior. 

"This is a wonderfully interesting, suggestive and stimulating little 
book.'* The Baptist Teacher. 

"A very thoughtful and helpful book. . . will be found instructive 
and quickening." The Examiner. 

"The book is the work of a thorough scholar, is conservative yet 
progressive, and gives a remarkably wholesome presentation of a very 
important subject." The Baptist Argus. 

" Scholarly but popular. . . will be found extremely useful to all who 
desire a concise but accurate and comprehensive presentation of the lead- 
ing teachings of Jesus concerning his mission." Baptist Review and 
Expositor. 

11 Clear and simple enough for the intelligent layman, but not unhelp- 
ful to the clergyman who wants clearer ideas as to his Lord's atoning 
work." The Treasury. 

i imo. Cloth bound. Pp. viii y 136. Price 75 cents. 



The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the 
Kingdom of God and the Church 

BY 
Geerhardus Vos, Ph.D., D.D. 



PRESS NOTICES. 

" This is a thorough yet compact study of Christ's teaching on the 
Kingdom and the Church.' * Auburn Seminary Review. 

"A vigorous and discriminating discussion of a vital theme. . . will be 
read with help and satisfaction by a large audience. ' ' The Baptist Ar- 
gus. 

"The discussion in this volume is of a great question, and the treat- 
ment is attractive and luminous. ' ' The Herald and Presbyter. 

"A scholarly volume. . . . the whole argument is well expressed and 
worthy of profound consideration. ' ' The Examiner. 

"Scholarly, comprehensive and condensed. The discussion shows 
wide reading of the literature of the subject, evangelical conviction and 
feeling, and great skill in the use of exegetical power. The conclu- 
sions reached, as briefly restated in the closing chapter, will commend 
themselves to earnest and moderate men, and the whole discussion will 
be fascinating and suggestive to trained students. " N. T. Observer. 

st Impartial, reverent and very careful. . . . Dr. Vos' standpoint is at 
once modern and temperate. His study will be of value, not merely to 
the trained student but to the general reader as well." The Church- 
man. 

11 The author has given a clear, strong, convincing argument in re- 
gard to his conception of the nature and place of the Kingdom of God 
in the world. It is a book that is profitable for reading, study and re- 
reading. ' ' The Midland Methodist. 

"A scholarly exposition of what is recognized to be the dominant 
theme of Christ's teaching. Especially valuable is the exegesis of Pe- 
ter's confession and Christ's consequent declarations." The Congrega- 
tionalist. 

limo. Cloth bound. Pp. vi, 203. Price 75 cents. 



OTHER BOOKS 

BY 

David James Burrell> D.D. y LL.D. 

Minister of Collegiate Church, New York 



Hints and Helps. I. (Studies in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Psalms, 
Daniel and the Acts of the Apostles). 463 pp. $1.25 

Hints and Helps. II. (Studies in the Prophets, Job, Proverbs, 
Ecclesiastes, the Acts and the Epistles.) 388 pp. $1.25 

Hints and Helps. III. (Studies in Genesis, Exodus and the 
Gospels). 405 pp. $1.25 

The Early Church. (Studies in the Acts of the Apostles.) 

312 pp. $1.00 
(These volumes by Dr. Burrell and Rev. Joseph Dunn Burrell.) 

The Gospel of Gladness. (Sermons) 

The Morning Cometh. (Sermons) 

The Religion of the Future. (Sermons) 

The Spirit of the Age. (Sermons) 

For Christ's Crown. (Sermons) 

The Golden Passional. (Sermons) 

The Wondrous Cross. (Sermons) 

God and the People. (Sermons) 

The Verilies of Jesus. 

The Teachings of Jesus Concerning the Scriptures. 

The Unaccountable Man. (Sermons) 

The Church in the Fort. (Sermons) 

The Wonderful Teacher. (Sermons) 

Christ and Progress. (Sermons.) 

The Gospel of Certainty. (Sermons) 

The Religions of the World. Fetichism, The Religion of 
Ancient Egypt, Zoroastrianism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, 
The Religion of Greece, The Religion of the Norsemen. 
Confucianism, Islam, The True Religion. 332 pp. $1.25 



318 pp. 


$1.00 


320 pp. 


$1.00 


304 pp. 


$1.00 


381 pp. 


$1.00 


370 pp. 


$1.00 


338 pp. 


$1.00 


351 pp. 


$1.00 


355 PP- 


$1.00 


102 pp. 


$1.00 


es. 211 pp. 


•75 


310 pp. 


$1.50 


316 pp. net $1.20 


327 pp. net $1.20 


267 pp. net $1.20 




$1.50 



Published or for Sale by 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 NASSAU STREET 
NEW YORK 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: June 2005 

PreservationTechnologie 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATK 

1 1 1 Thomson Park C 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



LIBRARY of 




CONGRESS 




0014 397 038 




3 • 



